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The Log 

of the 

North Shore Club 

Paddle and Portage on the Hundred 
Trout Rivers of Lake Superior 

By 

Kirkland B. Alexander 



With 40 Illustrations 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

(Tbe 'Rnicfterbocfter press 

1911 






Copyright, 191 1 

BY 

KIRKLAND B. ALEXANDER 






I 



^ 

K 



TTbe Vttt(cfterbecl:er ptcBS, "Rew fiorft 



©CI.A2S6781 



THE MEMORY OF HIM WHO 
THROUGH ALL THE TRAILS OF LIFE WAS MY GUIDE 

MY BROTHER 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction . ix 

Chasing a Camp Site and the Lure of a Per- 
ambulating Waterfall . . . . i 
Discoveries, Day-Dreams, and Mendacity at 

Duncan's Cove 27 

At the Knee of Michael .... 50 
Exploring the Headwaters of the Steel 

River and Billy Eraser's Anecdotes . 67 
" No Landing FOR Boats " .... 88 
In the Trout Democracy and Reefs of 

Chippewa Harbor 113 

A Beatific Error and a Secret Mission . 138 
We Encounter "Profanity Portage" and 

"His Lordship" Portages the Potatoes . 161 
The Perils of Running White Water Find 

William Teddy's Tongue . . .182 
The Trout of Cat Portage, the Fulfilment 

of Eleven Months' Dreaming . . 204 



[v] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"Wagush Takes us out to the Trout Reefs" 

Frontispiece 

A Respite from the Cares of Authorship . lo 

A Rift and Some Shelter in the Shore Rocks 20 

At Last — Duncan's Cove .... 28 

" They 're Rising, Right in Front of Camp" 28 

"A Light Breeze was Ruffling the Lake when 

WE HAD Breakfasted " .... 30 

He was Lurking at the River-Mouth . . 42 

" There 's a Rare Camping-Spot at Duncan's 

Cove" 42 

" Then the Sand Beach Began Swinging Open 

like a Gate " 46 

Joe Cadotte, Guide and Wilderness-Brother 50 

When Superior Begins to Sulk ... 50 

Posing for the Log-Keeper at Squaw Harbor 60 

" The Tragic Isolation of that Lighthouse ! " 76 

"Jim Talked Little at the C amp-Fire that 

Night" 82 

[vii] 



Illustrations 



PAGE 

"It Was the C amp-B oss , of Course, who Did it " 84 

A Consultation — "Wagush II." Vivisected . 86 

"Wagush II. Hauled us along 320 Miles of 

Superior's Shore-Line " ... 90 

North-Bound for the Land of Vacation 

Dreams 92 

" Ninety-Foot Falls " 102 

" For we had Found the Place of Monster 

Trout" 102 

His Excellency, the Governor, the Central 

Figure, Much Prefers this to Governing 104 

'* He Was a Little Better than Five Pounds " no 

Gargantua Light Is More Hospitable than 

it Looks . . . . .116 

Abandoned by the Honorable Hudson's Bay 

Company 116 

Where the Steamer Drops you Overboard 

among the Trout Reefs . . . . 120 

" We must Travel Light " . . . .126 

The New Race in the Lap of the Race that 

is Passing 134 

William Teddy Embarrassed and George 

Andr6 Resigned 140 

[viii] 



Illustrations 



TOMMIE NiSH-I-SHIN-I-WOG MANS THE FRYING 

Pan 152 

" Then Came * Beauty Lake ' " . . , .174 

" Something in the Way of Wild Waterways 

Worthwhile" 174 

Snug Camp on Hawk Lake . . . .176 

" We Pushed off to Hunt out the Mouth of 

Hawk-Lake River " . . . .180 

These Rocks Are Nan-i-bou-jou and Family . 1 82 

Of Course, We Lunched here at the Lower 

End of the Rapids 182 

A Setting Becoming to Most any Canoe . 186 

To Make Camp or TO Push ON — Time 6.30 p.m. . 186 

Achievements AND Invidious Comparisons . 190 

Diary-Writing — and Manicuring — on the 

Portage ...... 194 

The Firesand Is "a Pretty and Compact 

River" 198 



[ix] 



INTRODUCTION 

HOW little and inaccurately are Lake 
Superior and its rocky shores and 
massive wilderness known! Captains of the 
lake freighters, skippers of schooners, hardy 
fishermen in their rough camps, the Chippewa 
Indians, generations of trappers, and a few, 
a very few, gentlemen-fishermen by accident 
or family tradition know that vast and 
impressive land of primitive enchantment. 
And that is about all. Along the South 
Shore from Sault de Sainte Marie to Duluth, 
far to the west, there are towns and cities, 
magically growing and ceaselessly thriving. 
There are many lumbering camps and even 
clubs of gentlemen-fishermen whose luxurious 
tastes may still defy the wilderness. 

It is very different along the North Shore. 
That is the Superior country. In that ex- 
panse of rocky coast from Sault de Sainte 
[xi] 



Introduction 



Marie about 150 miles northward to Michipo- 
coten Harbor there are four fishing stations. 
From Michipocoten Harbor to Nepigon, 
roughly 220 miles, for the coast is indescrib- 
ably irregular, there are but isolated lumber 
camps; in some rude, hidden little harbor a 
fishing station; three settlements of a general 
store each; the few isolated lonely stations 
of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The 
fisherman, the pulp-wood hunter, and the 
prospector alone find profit and economic 
possibilities in that North Superior country. 
Unquestionably, it will never be otherwise. 
Nature there offers absolutely nothing save 
to him who comes to venerate her and her 
alone. The portage trails and the snow-shoe 
trails are still there and they are worn precisely 
as they were worn two hundred years ago. 
It is all rocky ridges, impenetrable thickets, 
archipelagoes of islands. The moose and 
wolf will undoubtedly ever roam those 
forests of pine and spruce and balsam and 
birch and the sacred silences will never be 
Ixii] 



Introduction 



desecrated, save by the scream of the gtill and 
the eagle circling overhead. Upon the back 
of the Pic River there are the great-grandsons 
of that Indian tribe which was there when 
the French plundered the Hudson's Bay 
post in 1750. Michipocoten Island, which 
the hardy Alexander Henry, Esq., boasted of 
discovering in 1760, "peopled by snakes," 
brooded over by the Great Spirit, " The Island 
of Yellow Sands," is still the occasional home 
of the daring prospector, braving solitude 
and privation in his mad hunt for gold and 
copper. 

It has changed not at all. It will change 
not at all. And the American people know 
the vast coimtry and inland sea so vaguely! 

Somewhere back in lakes, deep buried in the 
unknown wild, one hundred rivers take their 
sotirce and flow down through rocky gorges, 
plunge over falls, and roll at last into Lake 
Superior. Men, coming in tugs and yachts, 
have named those rivers and fish for the 
trout where waters of river and great lake 

[xiii] 



Introduction 



mingle. Not a tenth of them have been 
explored above their first falls. Beyond 
those falls there are virgin fishing and terra 
incognita; lakes of muscallonge; deep, dark 
pools whose tenants have yet to distinguish 
between the fly that is succiilent and di- 
gestible and the fly that is false and flung 
by death. There nature is undisturbed and 
man comes only, if at all, once in a decade 
or a half-century. The trout and salmon 
rivers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 
and Labrador are better known than Lake 
Superior, even with its Agewa River and Steel 
River and Nepigon River, where are the 
largest, gamiest, mightiest trout in the 
world. 

So, many years now the summer has led 
us there. From Sault de Sainte Marie, at 
the extreme southeastern corner of the great 
lake, where wilderness shrinkingly touches 
civilization, around that coast northward 
and then westward to the Hudson's Bay 
post at Nepigon, we have coasted in Macki- 
[xivj 



Introduction 



naw boat, in canoe, and, very lately indeed 
and reluctantly, in gasoline cruiser. That 
is about 370 miles of Superior shore-line and 
each mile of it has multiplied itself amazingly 
in priceless and ineffaceable memories. 

Each succeeding year the personnel of 
the party changed. That was inevitable. 
Business exigencies in the days of incom- 
parable dreaming and preparation often 
reared their Medusa-heads. To many en- 
chanted places we have not returned since 
death came among us and we never shall, 
for the memories of those places illumined 
with a single personality and a presiding 
spirit are much too exquisite. 

The purpose of these little chronicles — 
and they have been taken from the author's 
diary kept throughout these years — ^is to 
present to those who know not Superior, and 
those who yet happily may come to know 
her, the trivial events of camp-life, trivial 
truly, yet so full of color and vitality 
and vast meaning to those who know the 
[xv] 



Introduction 



intimacies of the rushing stream and camp- 
fire, gleaming in the northern twiHght beside 
an unknown lake. Some of us, a very few, 
have gone through these little adventures 
and scenes for these successive years. It is 
not easy to compile incidents so that they 
be of interest to the impartial observer, least 
of all to the unlover of the wilderness. To 
give them sequence and cohesion one is 
tempted to Actionize. To give them accuracy 
and unity one is oppressed with their trivial- 
ity. The logical compromise has seemed 
attainable only in humanizing them and 
imbuing them with the spirit of the North- 
land and a note of the song that then sang 
in our hearts. If only these little chronicles 
awaken one thought of the North and sound 
one wild, free note of the wilderness that 
beguiled us, the test will indeed have been 
met. It has been purposed for the little 
scenes and incidents between these covers 
that they be only simple, veracious, and of 
passing interest, all three of which qualities 
[xvi] 



Introduction 



are, after all, but the prime essentials of 
the gentleman-fisherman who hears the laugh 
of the waterfall in his office and whose 
memory stubbornly reverts to darting shad- 
ows in a deep, dark pool. 



[xviij 



The Log of the North 
Shore Club 

CHAPTER I 

CHASING A CAMP SITE AND THE LURE OF A 
PERAMBULATING WATERFALL 

THE offshore breeze brought the pungent 
odor of balsam and spruce and it was 
sharp with the cold of the Northland. We 
impressed and expectant six stood upon the 
bridge of the /. C Ford, husky little pulp- 
wood barge, and breathed in the intoxicating 
exhalations with the quivering nostrils of 
the atavistic man. The brilliant stars of 
the north country lighted the night. Over 
all was the silence of the wilderness. 

It was midnight, yet the afterglow of the 
tardy northern sun still tinted faintly the 
hilltops. Ahead, maybe two miles, maybe 
[I] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



ten miles, loomed the shadowy silhouette of 
land, the North Shore of Lake Superior. 

"Starboard some, Paddy," said Captain 
Morrison, down through the trap to the 
wheelsman. 

Then sounded three staccato whistles, 
then one and the engines stopped, for the 
first time since we left Saiilt Ste. Marie, 
twenty-four hours before, almost to the 
minute by the engine-room clock. Diago- 
nally across Lake Superior we had come. 

"Look at that black Titan with his head 
aflame," said Billy awedly. "It's stu- 
pendous," said Mac. "The grandeur of it 
is actually oppressive. Where 's Gepe? 
He 'd rave over this." 

"Say," came Gepe's voice from the black- 
ness of amidship, "which one of you fellows 
took the corkscrew?" 

At four o'clock that afternoon, when we 
were still far out on the lake, we had picked 
up that giant peak. It towered, we knew, 
from somewhere in the centre of an island 

[2] 



The Portals of Play-Day 

wilderness, known to the chart, the navigator, 
and the lumberman as the Island of St. 
Ignace, the second largest on Lake Su- 
perior. Lying a barrier that divides the 
fury of the great lake from the calm of 
Nepigon Bay, it stretches its massive length 
of inexorable granite, a huge rock twenty- 
five miles long and six miles wide, the home 
of moose and caribou, a place of almost 
theatric beauty and rushing brooks and leaf- 
canopied pools alive with trout, lurking in 
the shadows. 

For this moment, the first moment of a 
long play-day, we had dreamed and pondered 
and conferred with the delight of a common 
anticipation and then packed and forgotten 
things and locked office-desks and travelled 
— almost long enough to cross the continent. 
This was the Moment and on the bridge we 
revelled in it in silence, while the Ford rolled 
upon the long, majestic swell of Lake Superior. 

"I don't know about it, boys," said the 
Captain, thoughtfully lighting his wreck 
[3] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



of a briar. The inky seas raced by the sides 
of the ship. 

"There's quite a lump of a sea running 
in there and with your duffel your boats will 
be down to the gunwale." 

"You can't get in any closer?** ventured 
the Camp Boss. 

"There 's a hell of hungry reefs in there,** 
said Captain Morrison, "and besides, its 
the landing in the surf that '11 swamp you. 
I can't help you there. I 'm in pretty far 
now.'* 

A seventh sea, topping its contemporaries, 
irritably slapped the Ford's bows. The 
Captain spoke with more determination 
then. 

"I can take you around to the Blind 
Channel to-night, and, if there 's no sea, you 
can work around to Duncan's Cove your- 
selves by to-morrow night — perhaps." 

"And lose a day?" thought Gepe aloud, 
for he had but thirty days to fish. 

The Camp Boss looked around at the face 
[4] 



The Camp Boss Decides 

of each of us six in the northern starHght. 
Something he saw there seemed to reassure 
him. 

"We'll take a chance with the surf, I 
guess, Captain," said the Camp Boss quietly, 
for the Camp Boss, having been accustomed 
to lead and make decisions for somebody since 
his senior college year, ten years ago, always 
spoke quietly, and the firmer his resolve, 
the more quietly he expressed it. 

"Good," said the Captain. "I knew 

d well you would, but I wanted you 

to say it." 

The Captain walked to the rear of the 
bridge and shouted into the depths of the 
dark and silent ship : 

"Stand by there, boys, to lower away 
those two Mackinaws." Over the rail of 
the Ford they toppled our two eighteen-foot 
boats, any end up, painters alone fast to 
stanchions, down into the inky, ice-cold 
waters of Superior. They splashed and 
filled and a man slipped down the painter 
[5] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



and bailed them, as they bobbed upon each 
wave, leaping for an instant into the gleam 
of the ship's lights and then sinking into 
the abyss again. Then came to the rail 
for the lowering suit-cases and dunnage- 
bags, rod-cases and boxes of bacon and coffee 
and sugar and tea and crates of eggs, canned 
things in barrels; for we were tenderfeet 
then and knew not the economy of packing 
and the peril of squandered space and excess 
weight. 

It was fast work, for the Captain thought 
the sea from off the lake might be rising, and 
it was delicate work to lower away until the 
man, bobbing around down there in the 
spray and darkness, shouted to "hold" or 
"let go" as he found the precise centre of 
his mad little cork of a craft. 

The attempt to anticipate one's wants 
for a month in the wilderness — to foresee 
all one's comforts, whims for a month — is an 
intellectual achievement, and the accumu- 
lation of it — the pile of it — for six men makes 
[6] 



Michael, Wilderness-Mentor 

a shocking spectacle of selfishness, ignorance, 
and dependence upon truly sybaritic luxury. 
Of Gepe's steamer- trunk and bedroom slip- 
pers more shall be said anon. 

The men down there in the boats, bobbing 
in the black water and the darkness, were 
Michael (pronounced Michelle) Cadotte and 
his son Joe, two full-blooded Chippewas 
of the Garden River reservation. Michael 
thinks he must be eighty years old. He may 
be a hundred. He does n't know. Nobody 
knows. By their first names he has known 
generations of the country's distinguished 
lawyers, doctors, bankers, supreme justices, 
statesmen, for in the perfect democracy 
of the wilderness there are no conventions, 
stiff formality, or titles. Michael has been 
guiding and packing fishing parties along 
the rugged shores of Superior and up its 
hundred rivers for fifty years. He knows 
every likely pool and every moose yard. 
He is the patriarch of Lake Superior guides. 
His teeth and memory are not so good now. 
[7] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



His hand trembles, too, and he sleeps between 
heavier blankets. His children and grand- 
children and great-grandchildren have em- 
braced the religion of the white men in the 
little missions and gaunt meeting-houses of 
the shore settlements. But Michael still 
looks with veneration upon "Gee-sus" — 
the morning sun — as it rises over the granite 
ridges and the tumbling waters of Superior. 
Michael still leaves his offerings of tobacco 
upon the rock knees of Nan-i-bou-jou, who 
sits in petrified dignity, flanked by faithful 
squaw, daughter, and two dogs, at that point 
on the shore which the imaginative French 
voyageurs first saw and straightway set out 
to puzzle posterity by confusing it with 
Rabelais's monster-man and called it Gar- 
gantua. A gentle old savage, raconteur of 
graphic and inexhaustible memory, and a 
friend of great heart and vast loyalty is 
Michael Cadotte. 

When Michael and Joe had grasped all 
that had been lowered from above and stowed 
[8] 



Nosie'' Protests 



it away, there was left even less freeboard 
in those Mackinaws than Captain Morrison, 
in things nautical omniscient, had foreseen. 
The last article of excess baggage to be 
lowered away into the depths was "Nosie," 
a dutiful, trustful, and exceedingly gritty 
pointer-pup who thus far had, not illogically, 
utterly failed to grasp the purposes of his 
bringing and the potential delights of the 
trip. He had shivered in the nipping northern 
breezes on the bridge, learned to climb a 
ladder timidly under the stress of a craving 
for human society, brawled with the cook 
over depredations upon the ice-box, and had 
a thoroughly miserable voyage, unlightened 
by any discernible future promise or indi- 
cations of a guiding intelligence. Seized, 
bound by the middle with a galling rope, 
flung over the ship's side bodily to be dropped, 
apparently, to bottomless depths without 
redress or explanation, "Nosie" abandoned 
himself to an ecstacy of terror and his screams 
shattered the cathedral-like silence of the 
[9] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



northern night. "Nosie" had seen no boats 
lowered. How was he to know that this 
was friendly expediency and not blackest 
treachery? Promptly Joe seized him and 
smothered his cries and struggles beneath 
piles of warming duffel and "Nosie" was still. 

Following "Nosie" down that rope, man 
by man, we shared his trepidation. It is 
not cheering to cling in midair, very chill, 
black air at that, with mountains of icy 
water racing beneath, to wait until a boat 
comes up and meets one's feet and two sinewy 
Indian arms reach out and drag one to a 
very small dancing spot of comparative 
safety. 

Last to come over the side, bringing camera 
and creel and all of Gepe's tobacco and fly- 
books, which Gepe had, quite character- 
istically, forgotten, came the Camp Boss, 
which was quite proper and usual. And as 
he twined his feet about the rope Captain 
Morrison repeated his instructions. 

"I figure," he said, "that Duncan's Cove 
Iio] 




A Respite from the Cares of Authorship. 



Luxuries Mourned 



is just about dead-ahead as we lie now. 
Steer by the easterly-most star of the Dipper, 
the lower, big one there, and I don't think 
you can miss it. I '11 lay-to here until I 
see you wave an 'all right' signal with the 
lantern. Good luck to you and if they won't 
rise to a fly, remember the muscallonge in 
the lake three miles inland and keep ' Nosie ' 
for bait." 

I remember thinking, when the Camp 
Boss and Joe and "Nosie" and I pushed 
that heavily-laden Mackinaw away from 
the sides of the Ford, how fatuous and unfair 
and unsportsmanly had been the thought, 
when we first boarded the Ford, that she was 
crude in her appointments and lacking in 
the quasi-essential luxuries. Looking up at 
her there from an eighteen -foot Mackinaw 
headed into an unknown primitive, she 
looked bigger and finer and more homelike 
than the Mauretania, a lot more. 

Once out of the wash of the steamer it 
was n't so bad. The seas were long and low. 
[Ill 



Chasing a Camp Site 



So deep were we in the water, though, that 
rowing was tough. Loaves of bread and 
rolling cans of bacon make neither stable 
nor satisfying braces for one's feet, somehow. 
Low moans from "Nosie's" anguished soul 
for a while vied with the slush of the seas 
under the boat's deep-laden bows. 

There was n't much conversation. Joe, 
being an Indian, speaks in grunting mono- 
syllables when spoken to, and in a situation 
like this, spiced with a suggestion of danger, 
Joe never speaks at all. He took short 
but very deep and powerful strokes. It is 
hard for a white man to row with an Indian. 
He would stop every ten or fifteen minutes 
and drink from his cupped hand, for his 
mouth was dry. Joe was anxious to get 
ashore. 

A cloud on the Superior horizon as big 
as a pocket-handkerchief will drive an Indian 
ashore. For the boisterous, often brutal 
and terrifying moods of Michabou (or 
Nan-i-bou-jou), the "Great Hare," the Great 

[12] 



On Dark Waters Adrift 

Spirit, the god of all things, the Indians have 
a veneration that is much older than the 
Christian era. 

To row silently, interminably, in the shadow 
of the northern midnight upon a strange sea, 
toward a wild shore whose forest-tipped 
cliffs rise dimly in the darkness, is a spooky 
experience. There is an unreality about it. 
The silence, the vague odors of the woods, 
the brilliant northern zenith, the rush of 
the Stygian water, the proximity of the 
unknown suggest such thoughts as, material- 
ized and given concrete expression, gave to 
the world the weird genius of Gustave Dore. 
Anyway, it galvanized the imaginations 
of the six of us, but two days away from 
steel office-buildings and the table d'hdte 
dinner of the club. 

We rowed on, to us it may have seemed an 
aeon or so. Actually it was about an hour. 
The shadowed shore seemed to come no 
nearer. Curious, we thought, that trees 
and bushes, which we had seen easily five 
I13I 



Chasing a Camp Site 



miles out in the lake, were now no larger. 
Then we knew. They were not merely 
trees. The silhouette was the granite wall 
of the lake shore, cliffs that leap stark from 
the water. Some are twenty-five feet, some 
a hundred feet. The map does n't show that 
Superior is a vast bath-tub, with towering 
Laurentian granite substituted for immacu- 
late domestic porcelain. 

" Can you see the lights of the other boat?'* 
The Camp Boss's voice shattered the brood- 
ing silence to infinitesimal bits. Frankly, 
I could n't. Joe could. An Indian can see 
smoke where to the white man there is 
nothing and hear sounds for which nature 
has trained his tympanum alone for cen- 
turies to abnormal sensitiveness. 

"They're away from Ford/' said Joe. 
"Maybe two miles, but driftin' sou. They 
no see us." 

"Show them our lantern," said the Camp 
Boss. I quickly, and I thought accurately, 
judged that the emergency called precisely 
[14] 



Midnight Greetings 



for the "all right" signal. I waved the 
lantern as I had seen railroad men and 
surveyors convey that same satisfying in- 
telligence. Resiilts were prompt and emi- 
nently convincing. 

; Captain Morrison, by no means illogi- 
cally, concluded that that "all right" signal 
had come from the beach; that we had 
safely ridden the surf and landed upon a 
tolerant , if not hospitable shore. Three hoarse 
whistles ripped to shreds the silence of the 
sleeping wilderness. Bedlam, piercing and 
disturbing, broke loose far to the right in 
the darkness. A vast colony of gvdls on 
some wave-worn rock had been disturbed 
from their slumbers and shriekingly resented 
the intrusion. It was the crowning touch 
to the illusion of the unknown and the 
absurdly unreal. 

"She's putting out into the lake," said 
the Camp Boss. "But we can't be far off- 
shore now." 

It was an accurate prognosis. Green light 
[15] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



swung to port. Red light disappeared. The 
light on foremast described an arc. Lights 
of cabin astern then came into view. The 
old Ford^ comfortable in the fancied assurance 
that she had put six tenderfeet safely ashore 
where the worst they could do to themselves 
was to hook trout-fiies in one another's 
ears or overeat, turned majestically and 
steamed out into Lake Superior to resume 
the sordid but serious business of feeding 
pulp-wood to newspapers and giving "pub- 
lic opinion" a medium of sensational ex- 
pression. 

"There goes the tail of civilization," said 
the Camp Boss. 

"Where's dat?'* and Joe peered about 
apprehensively. "Nosie" burst forth with 
an agony of hysterical repining. It is 
"Nosie," anyway, who should have written 
the intimate chronicles of this trip. 

"Hear water," said Joe. "Maybe water- 
fall." 

"It 's Duncan's Cove then," said the Boss 
[i6] 



A Too-Literal Landing 

with unmistakable elation in his voice. " The 
little river empties in there and there 's quite 
a waterfall. It seems to be over there to the 
right, now." 

It was **over to the right." It kept 
moving to the right, too. Phenomena of 
floating islands obtruded themselves upon 
my boyhood memories, but among them was 
absolutely no precedent for a perambulating 
waterfall, bent upon noctiirnal depredations 
and cunningly scheming to Ivire the unso- 
phisticated voyager to his doom. We chased 
that waterfall in an arc of forty-five degrees. 
It ran along the shore, always to the right, 
always singing alluringly, ever louder, and 
we chased it, always pressing to starboard. 
and tried to head it off. 

Then the North Shore sprang out on us, 
frowning precipices, with balsams and spruces 
hanging dizzily over the abyss. The surf 
was hurling itself against the sheer wall of 
rock, swirling over reefs yellow-fanged, and 
the echo was flung back and out over the 
I17] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



vast reaches of Superior. This was our 
fugitive waterfall. 

"Back water, hard!" shouted the Camp 
Boss. Tins of bacon, rod-cases, suit-cases 
gravitated forward upon "Nosie" as Joe 
and I buried the oars in the choppy back- 
wash and backed the top-heavy Mackinaw 
out of the gaping jaws. 

"A beach over there," muttered Joe. To 
starboard again, beneath the black shadow 
of the cliffs, we rowed, the svuf booming 
furiously at the ends of our oars. It was 
taking gross and wide liberties with one's 
long-established conception of a beach when 
we found it. It was not sandy and gentle 
and hospitable. It was a shelving shore of 
pebbles, wonderfully uniform in shape, quite 
round, worn by an eternity of storms, and in 
size the diameter of an adult human skull. 
That is the kind of beaches that Superior 
makes. Everything is done upon a scale 
so heroic that it terrifies. 

"Can we land, Joe?" asked the Camp Boss. 
[1 8] 



Mingling with the Environment 

"We must," said Joe with his usual scorn 
of mental reservations and hypothetical 
conditions. 

And we did. We accumulated what head- 
way we could. The Boss selected a place, 
ghostly white in the pale starlight, where 
the "pebbles" looked smoothest and most 
yielding. The combers behind us co-operated 
with suspicious cordiality. They picked us 
up and we started shoreward in long, in- 
toxicating bounds. There was a grating 
noise beneath the bow. "Now!" said Joe, 
and he went over one side and I went over 
the other. Pvirpose, breath, my very ego 
were gone by the time my feet struck the 
uneven bottom. I was in waist-deep. The 
cold of Superior water is quite unbelievable. 
It varies less than five degrees the year 
round. 

"Lift!" shouted Joe. The next roller was 

not an enemy but an ally. We three, Joe, the 

roller, and I, heaved together and mightily. 

Five feet out on the "pebbles" lunged the 

[19] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



Mackinaw. We hoped to do better. Another 
such comber would swamp us. Flour, tea, 
coffee, clothing, blankets would go down 
with the flood. Without prologue or preface 
Joe began unloading. He filled the air with 
nondescript camping outfits and assorted 
groceries. "Nosie" was swept up in the 
vortex and joined the aerial excursion of 
articles, describing the same graceful para- 
bolic curve. They all landed in a neat little 
pile about twenty feet up the beach. I have 
never seen firemen, customs officers, or baggage 
smashers show ambition so laudable or form 
so flawless. I recall dimly in the transmea- 
tion of seeing "Nosie" trajected with a 
broiler and a diaphanous head-net snared 
in his chain and imparting both dignity and 
accuracy to his flight. When the boat was 
sufficiently jettisoned, we caught her and on 
those round stones she shot up the beach, 
well beyond the reach of that snarling surf. 
So deeply absorbed were we in the pressing 
work of saving duffel and rods and "eats" 

[20] 




A Rift and Some Shelter in the Shore Rocks. 



Catastrophe or Quadrille? 

from the hungry waters of the most pictur- 
esque perpetual ice-cooler in the world, that 
the light of the second boat escaped us. 
Also, the boom of the surf drowned her crew's 
shouts of inquiry, at first eager, then, not 
unnaturally, irritable, even impatient. With 
their oars they were holding their boat with 
difiBculty just beyond the clutch of the 
combers and watching our three forms dart 
about upon excursions, apparently, of frivolity 
and sheer light-heartedness. At last Gepe's 
stentorian voice bridged the turmoil of the 
waters: 

" Say, what are you doing in there — dancing 
a quadrille or laying carpets?" We gave 
them minute instructions, laying particular 
stress upon possible improvements over our 
own recent methods and achievements. 

"It all sounds very simple and attractive,'* 
shouted Billy, "except that jumping over- 
board business." 

"We '11 cut that out," added Gepe. "Let 
her go." 

[21] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



Their coming was really dramatic, so full 
of determination and courage and confidence 
in our counsel. We took the lantern and 
lined up, four of us, Camp Boss, Joe, "Nosie," 
and I, on the beach to welcome them to the 
vibrant wilderness. Gepe stood gracefully 
poised in the prow, one foot on the gunwale, 
lantern raised high. Washington, Father 
Marquette, Columbus, snapped under similar 
circumstances, had obviously impressed their 
poses upon Gepe. His boat had two more 
men and much more duffel and bacon and 
Scotch whiskey than ours. So it was much 
heavier. It had more momentum and, with 
greater draught, struck the bottom sooner. 
Also it seemed to strike the bottom harder 
and stop more abruptly. Prompt and im- 
plicit obedience to physical laws was to Gepe 
religion. As fell from the heavens the proud 
Lucifer, so lantern and Gepe arose splendidly 
from the bow, soared, turned their zenith, 
and plunged theatrically into Lake Superior 
at our very feet. To the platitude that 

[22] 



On the Shore, Anyway 

"opportunity makes the man" I have been 
little attracted. This, however, was posi- 
tively Gepe's first contact with wilderness 
exigencies and Lake Superior water and the 
manner in which his descriptive vocabulary, 
in the elasticity of which we had ever had 
the greatest confidence, arose to the occasion 
marked him as a man of versatility and re- 
source. It was thrilling, splendid. 

"The first wireless message," said the 
Camp Boss, as we salvaged Gepe. The boat, 
lightened of the onus of the picturesque and 
propelled by four oars that were vivaciously 
deluging the steersman, was caught by the 
next comber. We met her half-way. The 
aerial transit scene was re-enacted. Caught 
in the first shower of unyielding, winging 
cooking utensils, Gepe retired out of range 
to prance about and facilitate the return of 
his circulation. 

With the light of the lantern and the 
myriad of highly entertained stars we took 
inventory of party and outfit. Gepe, wetly 
[23] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



demonstrative; Bill, satirically sympathetic 
and IcMDking for a dry cigarette; Marv., the 
scientist, studying the constellations to locate 
Duncan's Cove; Mac, frantically upturning 
a chaos of duffel for his beloved Leonard rod ; 
Michael and Joe, Indian-like, looking for 
firewood on the heels of a cataclysm; Camp 
Boss, as usual, anxious only for the safety 
of the outfit and the comfort of each; and I, 
still stunned by the first breath of adventure 
and the first meeting with the forces of wild 
nature that had ever come into an orderly 
and flawlessly prosaic city life — we were all 
there — and were ashore, which was a great 
deal. 

To an Indian a fire is the beginning and 
end of all things. He sees in it, not only his 
bodily comfort, but his courage, his spiritual 
content — his Nan-i-bou-jou. Michael and 
Joe had a fire snapping before the air was well 
cleared of imprecations, flying duffel, and 
anxious interrogation. The Indian before 
the white man came knew the comforts and 
[241 



Magic Colors in the East 

joys of the fire. The white man takes to it 
with an amity and avidity that give evolu- 
tion a fresh clue to the atavistic man. 

That fire brought to us the romance, the 
charm, the humor of the incident and our 
current predicament. We rimmed it round, 
turning first one side and then another. 
We found that we could smoke and enjoy 
it. We found corkscrew and needful stimu- 
lant. We found that dry clothes were actu- 
ally procurable in that mound of duffel. We 
found our blankets — dry — heaven for such 
bounty be thanked ! 

It was two o'clock by Billy's infallible 
timepiece when order had quite come out 
of chaos and the tranquillity of civilization 
settled down again upon this strange night 
scene in the wilderness. 

The surf had ceased to boom so defiantly. 
The night was far spent. Indeed, the east 
was beginning to show magic colors. In 
the thickets somewhere the heartsore little 
"Canada bird" was voicing its eternal grief 
[25] 



Chasing a Camp Site 



in those four weird little minor notes. It 
was the beginning of a new day — yes, thirty 
new days, vacation days, days of fishing, 
exploring, conjecturing, maybe a little inno- 
cent dreaming of ambitions unattained and 
achievements and fame to come; days of 
most intimate confidence, perfect democracy, 
and purest and least selfish brotherhood — 
the brotherhood of the wilderness — where 
vanity and selfishness stand out as gaunt 
and chilling as the skeleton of the fire-scourged 
pine. Vacation days! Oh, the lure of them, 
the deHght of their anticipation, the joys of 
their realization, and the sweet sanctity of 
their memory! 

"The last man in bed puts out the light," 
said Billy and he rolled into his blankets 
upon the stones. Then we slept beneath 
the stars for the first time and a loon laughed 
maniacally far out on the lake — and dawn 
awakened us to look upon the wilderness — 
also for the first time — and life and youth 
and nature and God seemed very good. 
[26] 



CHAPTER II 

DISCOVERIES, DAY-DREAMS, AND ' MENDACITY 

AT Duncan's cove 

THE glare in our eyes of the morning sun, 
reflected upon the mirror-surface of 
Lake Superior, in aff ablest mood, awakened 
us. It is a curious and bewildering sensa- 
tion, two days from civilization, to awaken 
at four o'clock upon a wilderness-shore. A 
gull overhead scanned us and screamed 
frank disapproval. On one side the dazzling 
waters of the lake lost themselves in a cloud- 
less horizon, a clean stretch to the South 
Shore, 250 miles away. Fog, blown in from 
the lake, was crowning the tree-tops of the 
islands. On the other side there arose the 
bank, clad with osier, spruce, and balsam, 
and capped with pine and the dainty birch, 
"the white lady of the wood." To retrace 
and relive in two seconds the events oftwo 
[27] 



At Duncan's Cove 



days is a severe mental effort. The vibrant, 
glorious Present arose and smote me squarely 
between the eyes, when, rising in my blanket, 
I saw that hideous mound of assorted duffel 
and caught the vagrant bouquet of coffee 
upon the nipping lake airs. Michael and 
Joe, of course, were exchanging intimate 
Chippewa confidences over the inevitable 
fire. Eggs and bacon spluttered. The com- 
missary was organizing. Gepe's head emerged 
from a nimbus of blankets where his feet 
supposititiously were. The morning toilet 
was rudimentary. The hapless "Nosie," 
looking upon the fire as the first symptom 
of returning intelligence in his gods, hugged 
it shiveringly. 

Then the voice of the Camp Boss hailed us. 
Around a rocky promontory he pulled a boat. 
The sun had found him awake and prepared, 
alone, to scout the shore-line for Duncan's 
Cove. He had found it, too, as we should 
have found it, had that siren "waterfall" 
not lured us from the Captain's explicit 
[28] 




^ At Last — Duncan's Cove! 




"They 're Rising, Right in Front of Camp!" 



Duncan's Cove Upside Down 

course. Tin dishes are very good in the 
wilderness, but stone-china, retaining its 
heat longer, is better — though heavier and 
that in camping is of vital importance. 

A light breeze was ruffling the lake when 
we had breakfasted and reloaded the boats. 
They were loaded to the gunwales, too, 
but there was as yet no sea and we spread 
the sails and bowled down the lowering, 
inexorable shore. Two miles and there 
opened up an indentation much the shape 
of the hand. Lake Superior delights in 
running her fingers into the shore-line. 
Duncan's Cove is at the extreme tip of the 
middle-finger. Superior was already working 
up her regular noonday temper, but, when 
we swung into the cove, there was no ripple 
to mar the perfect reflection of rocks and 
trees and rugged hillside. The silent scene 
was reproduced perfectly upside down. 

It is snappy work and hilarious work to 
unload boats for that first camp in the 
wilderness — and hurl duffel, bread, canned 
I29] 



At Duncan's Cove 



things, rods, cameras, lanterns from hand 
to hand, until the man up the bank, of 
course Gepe, is deluged, smothered, and 
shouts for a coadjutor. 

There is a rare camping spot at Duncan's 
Cove. There is an ice-cold spring for butter 
— if you have it. There are tiny trout, too, 
in that spring. Few can have live trout 
in the refrigerator. There is a flat surface 
for the tents and hills tower on two sides, 
giving protection from the lake gales. There 
is a wealth of driftwood on the beach for 
your fire and balsam near by for your in- 
comparable bed of boughs. 

Camp was made with significant alacrity 
that morning. The bags and carpet-rolls 
were opened and blankets draped upon the 
bushes for airing and drying. 

Then the realization of the dreams of 
weeks, nay months! Out came books of 
flies, "leader "-boxes, silken lines, and intricate 
reels of fabulous price. Oh, the guile and 
eloquence of the sporting-goods dealer and 
[30] 







pq 



The Little Brown Hackle 

his insidious catalogue! The law should 
protect helplessly impressionable fishermen 
from the deadly lure of that illustrated 
catalogue. Trout-rods, perfunctory ones and 
priceless ones, were put together with trem- 
bling fingers. There was much discussion 
of the gastronomic tastes and epicurean 
whims of Superior trout, whether it should 
be lake flies or stream flies, Parmachenee 
Belle or Professor or Montreal or Silver 
Doctor or Coachman or the inornate but 
strangely reliable little Brown Hackle. 

We found the little river quickly — scarcely 
a half-mile from camp. It was but a large 
and self-important sort of a brook, anjrway. 
It came roaring out of an arch of birch and 
spruce and osier bushes, leaving the black 
shadows, and then, hurdling the beach, gushed 
out arrogantly into Superior. Where the 
gushing was going on, the Camp Boss was 
the first to cast. His three flies swished from 
the back-cast, perilously close to the waiting 
bushes, and settled lightly in the laughing 
[31] 



At Duncan's Cove 



ripple. We had n't long to wait. A white 
little stomach shot out of the water for the 
dropper-fly. The Boss struck and his line 
started for the far shore. Bill, in the torrent 
waist-deep, netted them, two of them, after 
ten minutes full of fight. Three trout on 
three flies are not infrequent in these far- 
away streams. Perhaps the spectacle of a 
brother - trout, apparently chasing tempting 
entries that seem to elude him, is irresistible. 
The Boss, Gepe, and Mac whipped the 
shore about the brook-mouth. The rest 
of us pushed through the thickets for the 
brook's pools. At last we came upon a 
moose- trail, a boulevard paralleling the 
brook's sinuous length. O! the delight of 
hunting pools on an unknown trout-stream! 
I remember one particularly. The moose- 
trail led up to and over a great black boulder. 
When we reached the top, we saw that the 
boulder bathed its feet in a shadowy pool, 
in diameter perhaps forty feet. The sun, 
peeping through the interstices of branches, 

l32] 



They Were There 



made golden mosaics upon its surface. I 
crept up and looked down into the depths. 
They were there! Very cautiously a rod 
was drawn up. The flies were cautiously 
lowered. When they touched the water, 
trout seemed to rush from all directions at 
once. They leaped a foot clear of the water. 
They hooked themselves. Then the problem 
of raising two pounds or so of fighting trout 
up a ten-foot wall on a five-ounce rod! There 
was no possible way to net them. We caught 
some and we lost many. 

The Dtmcan's Cove brook is scarcely a 
half-mile long. Then it finds a reedy marsh 
and loses itself in it. But there are two 
good pools and innumerable little pockets 
and alcoves, each with a good trout lurking 
and hungry always. One pool has a four- 
foot waterfall. It is deep and dark and 
the water dashes excitedly about its rocky 
sides like a bad-tempered little maelstrom. 
There is a clearing there that makes casting 
possible. Billy lost his heart to this pool. 
3 I33I 



At Duncan's Cove 



The Camp Boss said it was recrudescence 
of the egotistic Narcissus and the resistless 
reflection. Billy fell into that pool twice 
and made the grand tour each time with the 
current, applauded by a cheering gallery, 
before he found his feet on the stony bottom. 
Maybe it was that intimacy that wrought his 
enchantment. I do not think that a score 
of gentleman-wanderers have ever fished 
that beloved little brook at Duncan's Cove. 
Nature was in a tender mood when that 
brook was born. 

We dined on our first trout that night and 
most luxuriously, and before we dined the 
thermometer, dangling from its birch tree, 
as no thermometer doubtless ever dangled 
before, performed some astounding gym- 
nastics. The day had been warm and in 
the thickets the black flies were solicitous, 
particularly to Gepe, who coated himself 
lavishly with the odoriferous "Lallakapop" 
and called upon heaven to witness his un- 
merited tribiilations. The thermometer at 
[34] 



Thermic Gymnastics 



6.30 P.M. registered 70 degrees. The instant 
the sun dropped behind the high hills, that 
vast and self-replenishing refrigerator, Lake 
Superior, asserted its resistless will. Down, 
down went the mercury. In 35 minutes it 
fell 29 degrees and stopped to catch its 
breath for a moment at 41. We were per- 
spiring at 6.30 P.M. — at 7.30 we were looking 
for a second sweater and huddUng about a 
roaring camp-fire of dry pine logs. The after- 
glow was still flashing a false sunset at 10.30 
when we turned in. The northern heavens 
are indescribably brilliant. Preparing for 
bed on the lake shore generally consists of 
removing one's boots, belt, and eye-glasses, 
if one wears them, and borrowing what 
clothes one's tent-mate professes not to need. 
We heard a cow moose, far off in the tangled 
thickets of the island, calling her forest- 
suitor before we reluctantly left the fire. 
Then a tin cup of amazingly cold water, one 
more look at the myriad stars, one more 
message from a loon, laughing idiotically 
[35] 



At Duncan's Cove 



far out on the lake, anc" then the profound, 
dreamless slumber of the wilderness. 

I protest that personally I had no hand 
in the outrage whatever. Billy and Mac 
were up early. They had bathed hurriedly 
and in relays; I mean each in a relay. The 
part of the body that is submerged in Superior 
one minute grows numb with the exquisite 
pain of it. Billy and Mac merely splashed 
themselves. I heard what each one said 
to himself while he was thus splashing. It 
was, as I remember it, very earnest and fervid 
sort of monologue, too, rich with spontaneous 
observations and scriptural references. All 
this was before breakfast, of course. Gepe 
slept soundly through the uproar of the bath. 
When he poked his head out of his tent 
Billy and Mac were wrapped in bath-towels 
on the beach and engaged largely in the 
serious business of restoring circulation. 
Naturally, Gepe asked the superfluous ques- 
tion — the situation was ripe for it — and 
wanted to know what Billy and Mac had been 
[36] 



The Age-Defying Conspiracy 

doing. They might easily and veraciously 
have answered that they had been leading 
a cotillion or buying a touring-car. But they 
did n't. They wilfully and viciously de- 
ceived Gepe. Billy said: "We've been 
swimming out in the lake." It's difficult 
to convey an accurate idea of the craft in 
that retort of Billy's. Gepe fell. "Isn't 
it cold ? " he questioned half-heartedly. * ' Oh, 
maybe it is out in the lake, away out," 
admitted Billy airily, "but in this shallow 
cove here — why, it 's almost too warm. 
Isn't it, Mac?" "Yes," said Mac through 
chattering teeth — "why, it *s hardly any fun 
to swim in such hot water. It 's almost 
enervating." 

"Sounds pretty good to me," said Gepe, 
and he emerged from his tent, whistling, with 
towel on arm and soap in hand — and nothing 
else. 

They showed him a log — on which he 
could "walk out to deep water and dive." 
At the end of the log, Gepe, more perfunc- 
[37] 



At Duncan's Cove 



torily than anything else, a survival of boy- 
hood tradition at the swimming-hole, stuck 
two toes into the flood. He stopped whistling. 
He turned and looked over his shoulder. 
Black suspicion, misgiving, terror were in 
that look. Gently they began to roll the 
log. First, Gepe stormed and threatened. 
Then he begged, oh, so piteously! Then 
he sprang lightly into air and disappeared. 
And Michael met him at the beach, with 
Gepe's own flask. 

There is here introduced a new member of 
the party. It may seem an abrupt sort of 
an introduction, but it will be seen that the 
member figures prominently in subsequent 
events. Indeed, had it not been for this 
member, these chronicles would not be, which 
may or may not be construed as a grateful 
apodosis. The name of the new member is 
Wagush, which in pure Chippewa is " The Fox," 
and Wagush is a wonderfully conscientious eigh- 
teen-foot gasoline launch of hallowed memory. 
The Wagush, too, came up to us on the little 
[38] 



Enter Wagush Explosively 



pulp-steamer, J. C. Ford. She took joyously 
to the wilderness, though the confidence 
with which she shattered the sacred silences 
with her staccato explosions, for a while 
put our teeth on edge. We coiild not have 
gone without the Wagush. 

With her we found rivers Number One, 
Two, and Three and Squaw Harbor and 
Pappoose Bay and Otter Cove and the won- 
derful reef fishing off Richardson's Island 
and Caulkins's Beach. It meant circum- 
navigating St. Ignace Island, a two days* 
trip, to meet the Ford at "Headquarters," 
the lumber camp and loading station. But 
Wagush was indeed worth it. Our radius 
of operation was increased from about three 
to fifteen miles, without moving our per- 
manent camp at Duncan's Cove. 

We had heard of the reef fishing and the 
source of the information was spontaneous 
and picturesque. I once wrote a newspaper 
article about St. Ignace Island. I had 
interviewed a man who "looked timber" 
[39] 



At Duncan's Cove 



there. It appealed to me. He told me 
about a great lake in the depths of the 
island, "alive with trout and muscallonge, " 
possibly whales and ichthyosauri. As I re- 
member, I had that lake rather thoroughly 
congested. Nobody but this mendacious 
"timber-looker" had ever seen that lake, 
he said. What he did n't know about that 
lake I did, when I got well into the produc- 
tion of the interview. A dear old gentleman- 
fisherman down in Ohio read that interview. 
Evidently, he saw symptoms that convinced 
him that I might yet be saved. He had 
fished and hunted St. Ignace and began his 
enchantment in 1884 when the Canadian 
Pacific Railroad was in the building along 
the North Shore. He spoke to me kindly, 
but convincingly and at length. He heaped 
coals of fire upon my irresponsible head by 
sending me charts of St. Ignace and its 
littoral nicely marked in red-ink to locate 
the wonderful reef fishing. We have drunk 
healths to his charity and sportsmanly 
[40] 



A Toy Archipelago 



generosity and read prayers for his beatifi- 
cation. For we found his reefs and the trout 
which he had somehow overlooked. 

In Wagush and one Mackinaw boat in tow 
we started before Superior had developed 
the daily tantrum. We had frying-pan, tea- 
pot, bread, camera, and fishing-tackle. St. 
Ignace is the granite centrepiece of an 
archipelago. There are hundreds of islands, 
varying in size from mere gull-rocks, half- 
submerged reefs, to Wilson, Simpson, Salter, 
and Richardson's, scarcely less imposing 
than St. Ignace, their big taciturn sister. 
Through wonderful little channels, opening 
up surprisingly where, a moment before, 
only the shore seemed to be; across silent 
enchanted bays and bayous; past deceptive 
alcoves in the shore that looked like river- 
mouths and were not, we skimmed that 
silvery morning. 

Once we turned a rocky point suddenly and 
surprised a mother duck and her furry little 
brood not yet able to fly. The mother 
[41I 



At Duncan's Cove 



scorned to seek the safety of her wings in 
the face of this hideous coughing peril and 
they tore away with astonishing speed over 
the surface of the water, a screen of whitest 
foam upon a field of green. We must have 
left that demoralized brood with conversa- 
tional material for all indigenous fish-ducks* 
posterity. 

Many times we ran in toward the shore 
confident that we had found a river and many 
times that blind shore-line laughed at us — 
of such infinite variety are the conformations 
that they are bewildering in their very 
monotony. 

It was pure chance that we did find River 
Number Two at all, though we were scarcely 
a hundred yards from the shore when abreast 
of it. We had looked for rapids, perhaps 
a waterfall, at the very least a "riffle.'* 
There was none of these. There did n't 
seem to be much current. Yet it was a river, 
because we could trace its bed winding far 
inland through a valley by the lighter green 
[42] 



iS^rtm A. A 




There 's a Rare Camping-Spot at Duncan's Cove.' 




He was Lurking at the River-Mouth. 



Entangling Alliances 



of the trees and bushes that lined its tor- 
turous course. Cautiously we poled launch 
and tow-boat to casting-range and a colony 
of trout rushed to their rare taste of civili- 
zation and its dissipations. Three men 
casting simultaneously from an eighteen-foot 
launch can together produce an entertain- 
ment full of life, color, and comment-pro- 
voking situations. Gepe began auspiciously 
by hooking himself in a place where ex- 
traction was the least convenient to Gepe. 
Then Marv. wrapped a back-cast deftly 
about the Camp Bosses neck, and the Camp 
Boss put a Montreal No. 3 in the exhaust 
pipe — of the launch-engine — of course. 

As if this little exchange of amity and 
comity offered too little variety, Billy and 
Mac drifted up nonchalantly in the tow-boat 
and began inserting fly-hooks and festooning 
lines in such portions of launch and its occu- 
pants' anatomies as the crew had overlooked. 
We caught trout up to a pound. The sport 
palled and it began to look too much like 
[43I 



At Duncan's Cove 



game-hogging. Then the reefs outside, snarl- 
ing in foam, called to us. 

It is not always that one can fish the reefs 
of Lake Superior. I have waited and fretted 
and brooded in camp for a week for those 
white-caps to cease their snarling over 
yellow-fanged rocks where the biggest trout 
lie. One must catch Superior in sunny humor 
and that is n't often; generally it is in the 
very early morning or as evening is closing 
in on a brilliant day. These reefs are every- 
where along the whole Superior coast. They 
may mark the entrance to bay or cove or 
channel between islands. They may be 
near some little river's mouth, or they may 
stand out stark and isolated, a sinister splotch 
of snow, a white signal of great peril upon 
the green of the deep water, with the brown 
rocks of the shore completing the picture 
of triumphant wilderness. The only essen- 
tials for trout are that the water be com- 
paratively shallow, ten feet at the most; 
and that the bottom, the size and shape and 
[44] 



Fontinalis, a Wanderer 

arrangement of the rocks on the lake-floor, 
offer feeding places for trout. That is 
known generally as a "likely** reef and no 
other characterization is at all illuminating 
nor adequate. We have caught trout in 
water that was green in depth-color, bathing 
rocks on the shore that towered up two 
hundred feet. And we have caught them 
five miles from the nearest river-mouth. 
And they are brook-trout, fontinalis^ a 
little less brilliantly colored, perhaps, and 
a little, a very little, more silvery — but 
fontinalis just the same. On the South 
Shore they are called ** coasters,'* and it is 
off the reef that one gets the three, four, even 
five pounders — only the Nepigon, Steel, and 
Agawa Rivers know bigger fish. 

Personally, I have found the brilliant 
salmon flies, such as Silver Doctor, Royal 
Coachman, and even Red Ibis, the best lure 
for reef-casting. One beloved and battered 
Parmachenee Belle that now, in its honorable 
scars of battle, looks like a last season's 
[451 



At Duncan's Cove 



picture-hat, has brought a dozen trout from 
elysium in the green depths. The sport of 
reef fishing lies, perhaps, in the length of 
line upon which one gets the fish, the facility 
for casting, and the amazing gaminess and 
ferocity of the fish. It appears to be the 
consensus of passably expert opinion among 
Superior fishermen that the best reef fishing 
of the lake is to be found off the rocks at 
the entrance to the Little Pic River. But, 
literally, everywhere there is reef fishing. 

We did very well on those reefs ; the official 
Log says so. Just how well it were immodest 
and unnecessary to chronicle. We did better 
over those reefs in another year. We had 
with us then a very gentle, willing, enthusi- 
astic, lovable tenderfoot in the person of a 
nature-hungry Business Man. All he knew 
about casting or patching a birchbark canoe 
he had gleaned by assiduous reading of 
the instruction-departments of the vacation- 
magazines and those devilish catalogues of 
the sporting-goods men. It will be seen at 
[46] 




O 



•A . 



m 



The Business Man Casts 

a glance how intimate and intensive the 
Business Man's camping-erudition really was. 
He had a wonderful fishing outfit. He 
knew it was wonderful, because it had cost 
him $525.72. The 72 cents was for an 
aluminum safety-pin, "quickly, safely, and 
neatly" to "fasten leader-box to alligator- 
skin belt." 

The Business Man had done lots of spec- 
tacular and delightful things before we 
reached the reefs, but here was his ripest 
achievement. We told him how to cast 
and, conjuring up his full, profound theo- 
retical knowledge he did so — while his boat- 
mates sought cover beneath the seats and 
stern-sheets. Trout are full of caprices. 
One rushed at the Business Man's fly as 
with it he roughly lashed the water into 
foam. He did n't see the fish and looked 
surprised when we called his attention to 
the pleasing incident. Another foolish trout 
tried to catch the fleeting vision of food, and 
tugged the Business Man's line. The situa- 
I47] 



At Duncan's Cove 



tion was novel to him. He could n't recall 
what good usage demanded. So he did 
nothing. He explained afterward that he 
thought it might be the safe and courteous 
course to permit the trout to swallow the fly 
right down to his tail, if he cared to, and 
then deftly pull the trout inside-out, thus 
saving much irksome culinary labor. We 
expostulated with the Business Man and 
told him to "strike" the instant the trout 
took the fly, before he could bite it and learn 
the hollow mockery of the snare. The third 
trout came. The Business Man threw his 
whole 1 80 pounds into the strategy and jerked. 
We found on his tail-fly a tragic bit of fish- 
gill. We counselled, then, alacrity and force, 
but both in moderation. 

I have often thought that the trout on the 
reef that day were deliberately baiting that 
Business Man. The fourth trout came. 
Possibly he was looking for an extractor of 
an aching or superfluous gill. The Business 
Man struck and the trout stuck. Came, 
[48] 



A Line in Pleasant Places 

then, a wealth of hearty and conflicting 
suggestions. The Business Man reeled and 
gave out line, rushed over people's feet, 
shouted for the landing net, and implored 
silence and sea-room. Then panic seized 
him and claimed him as its own. He in- 
continently dropped his rod to the bottom 
of the boat, seized his line, and began hauling 
in that trout hand-over-hand in long, sweeping 
jerks. In about two jerks it was all over 
— save for the Business Man. Then he 
dropped his reel overboard and we had to 
haul in fifty yards of line before we could 
net it. The Business Man, however, has 
lived down that dark and hilarious chapter. 
He is now a blood-brother of the North Shore. 



I49l 



CHAPTER III 

AT THE KNEE OF MICHAEL 

YOU will not find Squaw Harbor nor 
Pappoose Bay on the maps of St. 
Ignace Island, which resolutely warns Lake 
Superior back from the refuge of Nepigon 
Bay. There is reason for that. There is 
really so much in Lake Superior to put on the 
map and the few people who are there to 
cut pulp- wood or run surveys or just fish are 
really much too busy to trifle with a topo- 
graphical feature that spans less than three 
or four miles. There is no drug store on 
the island whose kindly city-directory, be- 
tween the cigar case and the telephone, tells 
you what car line to take to Squaw Harbor 
and Pappoose Bay. There is no corner 
policeman with ponderous circumlocution, 
nor small boy with suspicious alacrity to 
[50] 



m^ 




Joe Cadotte, Guide and Wilderness-Brother. 




When Superior Begins to Sulk. 



Tactful Candor 



direct you, either. Yet Squaw Harbor and 
Pappoose Bay are on the southern shore of 
St. Ignace Island, about five and one half 
miles, which in the northern wilderness 
signifies quite nothing whatever, from Dun- 
can's Cove. There! The secret is out. 
I am wilfully and nefariously violating the 
very canons of fishermen's ethics in telling 
you these places by their really, truly names 
and giving mileage with such wanton ex- 
plicitness. There is reason, or, at least, 
palliation for this confidence. You could 
get right up to the doors of Squaw Harbor 
and Pappoose Bay and push the button with- 
out recognizing the neighborhood. I could 
give you red-inked charts and careful triangu- 
lations and landmarks and a slap on the 
back and you could not find Squaw Harbor 
or Pappoose Bay without a guide, and you 
could spend a month hunting around Nepigon 
or Rossport or Port Arthur for a guide who 
really knows St. Ignace Island. Occa- 
sionally, there arise those concrete situations 
[51] 



At the Knee of Michael 

when honesty is not only "the best poHcy, '* 
but really a very showy sort of a literary 
expedient. 

It was noontime when we found Squaw 
Harbor. We had fished the reefs and a sea 
was beginning to roll in from the old lake 
which made reef-casting futile and highly 
gymnastic. We very much wanted a place 
to moor the launch and build a fire for tea- 
pot and frying-pan. First, we saw a beach 
of wonderful flat stones. We followed this 
beach around. It was the left shore, evi- 
dently, of a likely-looking cove. The right 
shore was rocks and timber down to the very 
water's edge, an impenetrable wall. We stuck 
close to the beach, running under a check, 
turning always to the left, until we abruptly 
slid into a crystal basin, a perfect oval, per- 
haps fifteen feet deep ; but so wondrously calm 
and clear was the water, that pebbles on the 
bottom sparkled in the chromatic reflection. 
We sailed slowly to the end of this enchanted 
pool and found that a wooded strip scarcely 
[52] 



A Titan's Bath-Tub 



twenty feet wide was all that separated us 
from Lake Superior, booming outside. We 
were back at the point where we had first 
found the beach, afloat in a perfect miniattire 
harbor. Billy called it "Superior's guest- 
chamber.'* Superior has many such guest- 
chambers, though none so symmetrical and 
wholly bewitching as this. 

We lunched on that beach. The launch 
was pulled out; the bow on the beach, the 
stern in fifteen feet of water in a natural 
bath-tub built for a Titan. The flat stones 
made a stove of quaint architecture but 
admitted efficiency. We fried the trout. 
We brewed the tea. What fabulous divi- 
dends would the metropolitan caf^ pay that 
could specialize in fried trout, toast, tea 
and marmalade such as that! But no caf^ 
can, for it is not the trout and toast and tea 
and marmalade, labor of love though they 
are, but the sauce of the wilderness. 

With the marmalade there returned suffi- 
cient strength for the quite inevitable aca- 
[531 



At the Knee of Michael 

demic discussion. Billy spoke admiringly 
of the "dry-fly" casting necessary to lure 
the highly educated trout in the streams 
of English country estates. Gepe scoffed 
at the skill which casting of such nice accuracy 
and flawless technique entails. Billy bet a 
ten-dollar note — a sagacious wager always 
in the wilderness — or a package of real 
Turkish cigarettes, that he could keep his 
fly in the air until he was ready to drop it 
into the water and could then drop it within 
six inches of the spot he coveted. 

They repaired to the edge of that wonder- 
ful beach. The "gallery" left the "lunch 
things" and went to applaud and sneer. 
Billy performed spectacularly. His fly winged 
about like a thing alive. Then he said 
"here goes" and aimed at a cork — Gepe's 
contribution — floating thirty-five feet out in 
the harbor. The fly alighted, softly as a 
snow-drop, scarcely an inch from the cork. 
Billy started his back-cast, for the fly must 
not be permitted to get wet. His rod fairly 
[54] 



A Taste for Antiques 



doubled on itself. There was a swirl of 
water and a gutteral exclamation from Billy. 
In that fraction of a second that his fly had 
rested on the water a lunking trout had taken 
it and was now racing lakeward. He was 
brought back cautiously, only to stampede 
again and yet again. At last we drew him 
out on the beach, belly-up. Ranged along 
that beach, casting-distance apart, we killed 
a half dozen fish. I had a curious mishap. 
Thoughtlessly I had brought a very old 
book of very old flies, a heritage, I think. 
In a mad moment I had mixed those flies 
with modern and staunch ones. An old 
fly had insidiously worked its way to my 
leader. A trout, with a taste for antiques, 
took that treacherous relic and, just as I was 
about to fling him out upon the beach, the 
snell broke. He swam off groggily and then 
sank to the bottom, weary and worn, to 
get his wind. I presume that obese trout 
are short of breath. In that pellucid water 
we watched him and yearned for him. The 
[55] 



At the Knee of Michael 

Camp Boss, attracted by the execrations 
and cries of anguish, came up and inaugu- 
rated a systematic course to salvage that 
trout. He put a sinker on his line and 
bumped that exhausted fish on the nose until 
he had a fly underneath him. Then he lifted 
smartly and behold! The trout was hooked 
and brought unresisting to his doom! 

A loon led us into Pappoose Bay that same 
afternoon, a loon that had been to the grocery 
and was hastening home, purchase-laden, to 
her hungry brood. In shape and compara- 
tive size Pappoose Bay is a sort of third-floor- 
suite arrangement with reference to Squaw 
Harbor; a chamber for guests of, perhaps, 
the second magnitude. There are, too, the 
beach, the unrippled lagoon, the screen of 
living-green between it and morose Superior 
— and the trout, lurking in crystalline depths. 
We found an Indian camp in the bushes near 
by Pappoose Bay. Two things told us it was 
an Indian camp — the tepee-poles and its 
location in the bushes, where no human but 
[56] 



"Lo, the Poor Indian'' 

an Indian could for an hour live in sanity 
with black-flies. 

That there is a decided intellectual move- 
ment — upward or downward — among the 
Indian indigenous to Pappoose Bay we found 
undeniable evidence. It was the fragment 
of a dime-novel, most virulent and lurid — 
done in English. Even the author of such 
turgid fiction must have a torpid conscience 
and I will not crush him entirely by giving 
his name and infamy to the world. The 
incident, however, offers a nice conjectural 
point for discussion — whether literature is 
regenerating or debauching the fairly "no- 
ble red man." Billy wondered what "the 
six best sellers" in Pappoose Bay were, 
anyway. 

In the basin of Pappoose Bay Mac had a 
curious experience with a trout. I find it 
entered with minute detail and quite breath- 
less gusto in the Log of that year, because 
it impressed me then as an incident that 
added a brand new chapter to ichthyological 
[57] 



At the Knee of Michael 

researches. Since then the phenomenon has 
been repeated at least three times and I have 
lost the hectic flush of the discovery. A 
trout took Mac's tail-fly, a little Brown 
Hackle, rather frayed and faded, took it 
away with him, in fact, as if for closer scru- 
tiny at his leisure. Mac was, of course, 
disconsolate. The trout grew in length and 
weight and beam as Mac detailed the outrage 
to each sympathetic member of the party in 
turn, until that trout, in making off with his 
loot, really raised a swell that inundated 
beach and launch like a tidal- wave. To take 
his mind from such depressing retrospection, 
Mac was urged to cast again with the hope 
of avenging the insult; perhaps upon the 
culprit's brother or some other blood relation. 
On the second cast, Mac got a rise and 
hooked his fish. With surprisingly little 
exertion he netted his fish and found his 
abducted Brown Hackle coquettishly deco- 
rating that gourmand's jaw. Clearly, then, 
if fish have even an elementary nervous 
[58] 



Adorable Frailties 



system, they do not permit it to interfere 
with their appetites. 

When the Camp Boss looked significantly 
at his watch, it was six o'clock and we were 
nearly ten miles from camp. That is, the 
Camp Boss subsequently deduced that it 
was six o'clock. That watch of the Camp 
Boss's was a fecund source of discussion, 
admiration, and fatuous entertainment for 
four consecutive years on the North Shore. 
It was, I think, the only watch I ever knew 
that really possessed and demonstrated, with 
the slightest encouragement, a temperament. 
When the Camp Boss essayed to tell the 
time by that sullen and volatile computator, 
he followed always the same impressive 
ceremony. First, he looked at it searchingly, 
half distrustfully, rather reproachfully. Then 
he rapped it smartly three times in quick 
succession upon a friendly rock or tree or 
cylinder of the engine. Hurriedly, then^ 
he 'd get the general trend of time by re- 
calling the events of the day in chronological 
[59l 



At the Knee of Michael 

order; look searchingly at the sun, if there 
were any; produce a pencil and paper; make 
a rapid but surprisingly accurate calcula- 
tion, and announce the time with a ring of 
well-repressed triumph that always quite 
swept us off our feet in a tumult of applause. 
" Mathematics taught in camp" or " Wenley's 
Wonder- Working Watch, a stimulus and 
absorbing game for slow-witted campers!" 
I Ve often marvelled why the sporting-goods 
men and their catalogues have n't commer- 
cialized that temperamental watch of the 
Camp Boss. 

Anyhow, it was six o'clock. We stopped 
neither at the reefs nor the little rivers but 
dashed straight for camp. Even a tiny thing 
such as the Wagush and her draught of 
scarcely sixteen inches must look searchingly 
ahead in those treacherous waters. There 
are buried reefs and needle-pointed rocks 
everywhere and in the most unexpected 
places. Once, when at least two miles off 
shore, opposite Heron Bay, cruising in a 
[60] 





c/: 



o 



Michaers Fire Guides 



dory that drew eighteen inches of water, we 
struck one of these church-spires stretching 
up, perhaps, three hundred feet from the 
lake-floor. So fast were we travelling, that 
we fairly hurdled it and stove through one- 
inch planking a hole, which we were able 
to plug. 

Night was closing in as the Wagush sped 
to Duncan's Cove. Superior was "thick- 
ening up." The sun being obscured by 
clouds and lake-mist, it suddenly grew un- 
believably cold. A choppy sea, too, was 
running, we found when we shot out of the 
shelter of the last toy-archipelago and struck 
straight across the considerable bay that 
joins Superior and Duncan's Cove. The 
ice-cold spray deluged and chilled us. But 
swinging about the last gray point in the 
shadow of great cliffs hurling green waves 
and eternal defiance back to the warring 
lake, we saw the glare of Michael's huge 
camp-fire, lighting up the whole rocky alcove; 
it illumined our course and suffused our 

[61] 



At the Knee of Michael 

hearts with a gentle glow. "Nosie" ex- 
tended a welcome as ecstatic as cramped legs 
would permit and reclaimed his gods, caprices, 
disloyalty, and all. There was warm cloth- 
ing to be donned nimbly. There was a flask 
of "family size." There was the crackling 
fire of pine and fat-birch. There were 
Michael and Joe's dinner-preparations sus- 
pended at the very denouement for the 
coming of the masters — and the coming of 
the trout. We dined in the fire's glow. 

We led Gepe away from the table (it was 
a table, too; resourceful Joe had fashioned 
it from two pine boards cast up by the seas 
to bleach to snowy whiteness). To be 
accurate, we carried Gepe from the table. 
Not that his incredible capacity menaced 
the commissary, but we cared for Gepe; 
cared for him much more deeply than we 
cared for the imminent probability of a 
hopelessly foundered tenderfoot on our hands. 
One must remember that in the first days 
in the wilderness. The exposure, the physical 
[62] 



Post-Prandial Prowess 

exertion, the tonic of air and sun bring the 
commensurate appetite to restore the nerves 
and muscles and tissues before the digestive 
organs have time to prepare themselves for 
the new and extraordinary demands made 
upon them. The temptation to overeat is 
strong. The penalties are immediate and 
severe. Many a glorious vacation has been 
nipped in the bud by this indiscretion. 

In the delicious reaction that, in the wil- 
derness, comes ever with a full stomach and 
an emptied briar pipe, energy and ambition 
hand-in-hand returned to Billy and Gepe. 
They dared each other to deeds of agility, 
strength, and daring. After an exhaustive 
exchange of slurs and invidious comparisons, 
they repaired to the beach, there together 
to join the issue and carry to the fire the 
sturdiest timber that Superior had tossed 
upon a heaving billow. There were much 
grunting and muttered recrimination in the 
darkness. They worked for a while with 
taunts and maledictions upon the opposite 
[63I 



At the Knee of Michael 

ends of two distinct timbers, so deeply em- 
bedded in the sand that a fish-tug could 
not have budged them. Having discovered 
this discrepancy and focused their efforts 
upon the same log, they returned with re- 
newed enthusiasm to mutual accusations, 
and, at last, came back to the fire empty- 
handed, each full of descriptive adjectives 
for the treachery and physical subnormality 
of the other. Joe witnessed that thrilling 
duel of well-trained vocabularies and a few 
minutes later, grinning broadly but with 
never a word, he brought that timber along 
with four larger ones to the fire in a single 
armful. 

Michael came out of the shadows when 
Joe had handed his quietus to our comedians 
and asked how we should like to have boiled 
trout on the morrow. Michael often lays 
neat little ambushes, more insidious and 
deadly than the more sanguinary ones of his 
forebears. I thought I scented one here. 
We told Michael that the suggestion of a 
I64] 



Boiling in Birchbark? 



boiled trout filled us with poetic longing, 
but not having carried an iron pot 300 miles 
with us, and the local hardware stores un- 
questionably being closed for the night, we 
guessed we 'd have to starve on fried trout 
for a while. "No," said Michael indulgently. 
*'No iron pot. I make pot to boil trout with 
birchbark.'* 

That was frankly side-splitting. Michael's 
whimsical humor had betrayed itself at 
last! The spectacle of a trout simmering 
over a fire in a pot of birchbark, which for 
inflammability is a substantial improvement 
upon gasoline-soaked tinder, was too mirth- 
provoking. We laughed heartily at Michael, 
who did n't laugh — just smiled Michael's 
very gentle and sweet old smile. 

The next morning Michael appeared with 
a birchbark pot. It was unquestionably 
water-tight and most ingeniously made. 
A very workmanly job. It had two neat 
little compartments. But how make it fire- 
proof? We stopped smiling and exchanging 
s [65] 



At the Knee of Michael 

clever comments. Michael first showed that 
water coiild circulate between the two com- 
partments. Then he half-filled them. He 
put the trout, a good three-pounder, in one 
compartment. With two sticks he deftly 
took a stone from the ashes of the fire, white 
hot. Very, very slowly he immersed the 
stone in the water of the other birchbark 
compartment. When the stone was sub- 
merged, the water and the trout were boiling 
in the adjacent compartment. Thus we 
lunched upon boiled trout, boiled in a pot 
unscathed by fire. Since that demonstra- 
tion of primitive culinary resource there have 
arisen many, many occasions where Michael 
has had the last, satisfying laugh and has 
always, too, laughed with an abandon and 
lightness of heart remarkable in the stoi- 
cal red man. It was at Michael's knee in 
the warm shelter of Duncan's Cove that 
we learned first to toddle in the northern 
wilderness. 



[66] 



CHAPTER IV 

EXPLORING THE HEADWATERS OF THE STEEL 
RIVER AND BILLY FRASER's ANECDOTES 

ALAS, the poor Nepigon! Whence have 
fled the sacred silences and sanctity 
of the wilderness? You dress for dinner now 
in the roar of the rapids and drop off to see 
a lawn-fete or a polo-game while your packers 
are taking your outfit over the portage. At 
least, the modern Nepigon is almost as bad 
as that. The bustle and thrift and concourse 
that come with judicious advertising and 
continuous exaggeration have entered in. 
Every angler, before qualifying, must do the 
Nepigon, precisely as the young pianist 
traditionally must have a whirl with The 
Moonlight Sonata, or the budding man of 
letters flounder in the "symbolism of Maeter- 
linck." Twice we have tried the Nepigon. 
[67] 



The Steel River 



Once we went the forty miles, nearly to Lake 
Nepigon, blithely crowding the portages with 
fellow "tourists" (hated term) and bumping 
canoes as continuously as if it were a park- 
lagoon on "band-concert night. " The second 
time we brawled with the drunken Indians 
of the guides' union for two days and gave 
it up when the head guide, sullenly drunk, 
insisted upon inventorying our commissary 
to assure himself that delicacies were forth- 
coming worthy of his station and epicurean 
tastes. The Nepigon has been popularized 
and commercialized. Either is desolation 
and both mean death. It is paying the 
dread penalty of literary distinction. 

I mention these unpleasant aspects of the 
new Nepigon simply to show that we were 
literally driven to the Steel River. And 
for this circumstance we have always been 
extravagantly grateful to the plethora of 
pestiferous tourists and the convivial guides 
of the Nepigon. 

To us the Steel first proffered the need- 
[68] 



Not Tourist-Trodden Yet 

ful hospitality of the "overflow meeting.'* 
Thereafter, it was three weeks of paradise, 
and then eleven months of pining and antici- 
pation. I will not tell you where it was. 
That were unethical — and unnecessary. It 
is marvellous, is the Steel River. It is a 
Nepigon reduced about one third and, scen- 
ically, wilder and more gorgeous. Five 
miles from its cunningly concealed mouth 
there is a natural harbor, Jack Fish Bay, 
and in the harbor there is a coaling station of 
the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Perhaps a 
half dozen parties a year ascend the Steel, 
but only to Mountain Lake, ten miles from 
Lake Superior. Thirty miles beyond that 
it begins its mad scrambling and tumbling 
down from the highlands, through canyons 
and caverns, over falls of forty feet and rapids 
of chaos — and that is thirty miles of true 
wilderness — and virgin fishing. 

We had been out for two weeks, in thirty- 
foot power-dory Wagush, and tow-boat, when, 
as night was closing in, with a southwest 
[69] 



The Steel River 



blow coming on, too, we swung around the 
last rocky promontory and romped into 
Jack Fish Bay. 

Bill Fraser was waiting for us and had 
been waiting for us with canoes and grub 
and packers and waning enthusiasm for a 
week. Bill Fraser keeps a hotel, the hotel, 
at Jack Fish. I have always suspected that 
Bill Fraser keeps the hotel simply to afford 
prodigal hospitality to every brother fisher- 
man and insure himself an audience for his 
shooting and fishing narratives. Hotel and 
narratives are good. Bill himself weighs 
1 60 pounds and can carry 200 pounds over 
the portages without interrupting his remin- 
iscence. 

We were off at sunrise. That is, we stag- 
gered from our beds at sunrise with assur- 
ance of starting up the river immediately. 
First an all-essential " tunk-strap, " for pack- 
ing, was missing and Bill Fraser found that 
Bill, Jr., had been using it for reins. Then 
a setter-pup showed symptoms of distemper 
[70] 



Frontier Pastimes 



and whined for sulphur, and a fish-tug came 
in to coal, and the sweet-faced old lady of 
Jack Fish's one store must be routed out 
to sell us bacon and bread. 

Bill Fraser has a team and wagon on the 
first portage, which is exceedingly good, be- 
cause the portage is four miles long. How- 
ever, the manner of getting team and wagon 
from Bill's stable to the beginning of the 
portage is "quite a chore," a hair-raising, 
nerve-shattering sort of a " chore . " A granite 
ridge, impassable save to mountain-sheep, 
drops down to Lake Superior. The track 
of the Canadian Pacific is the only highway 
Bill's team knows. Walls of rock hedge in 
that track. There is no hope and no room 
for side-stepping. Bill hitches up, reduces 
his wagon-load to greatest sprinting-efficiency, 
takes a look at the time-table of regular 
trains, and with a whoop starts up the railroad 
track on his mile dash. The meeting-up 
with a way-freight or belated transcontinental 
would mean a contretemps which Bill has 
[71I 



The Steel River 



now for twenty years contemplated with a 
grin. He has come to enjoy the sport of 
outguessing the Canadian Pacific. 

We walked — and walked well in the rear — 
out of range of flying fragments. The teanij 
had scarcely slipped off the ties, down on^. 
the trail, when a freight whizzed by. The 
engineer shook his fist at Bill Fraser as if 
promising himself better luck next time. 
They 're grim humorists — these frontiersmen. 

When we saw a dainty little Peterboro 
canoe and Bill's preparation to pack it on 
the wagon, we asked Bill frankly, perhaps 
sharply, if he purposed taking four men and 
about five hundred pounds of duffel and grub 
over forty miles of swift water in that cute 
little desk-ornament. Quickly we saw we had 
hurt Bill's feelings and pride. The portage 
problem he had solved long ago with the 
swift, strong sweep of the pioneer. That 
canoe was for the first lake only. There was 
another for the second lake and the two big 
roomy, rangey Peterboros waited at the 
[72] 



Paddling across a Mirror 

end of the second lake for the up-river 
trip. 

Bill Fraser sitting astride the bottom of 
that canoe, a- top the wagon, careening over 
boiilders, down gulches, and through thickets, 
gave an exhibition of boatmanship as thrilling 
as I ever saw. At the first stop we found 
the syrup loose in Jim's flannels and the 
quinine pills in the butter-jar. 

Rough as it is, that country of the first 
fovir-mile portage is as beautiful as a city 
park. The trees are the exquisite white- 
birch with an occasional spruce or balsam 
for purely decorative purposes. We made 
Clear Water Lake in an hour and then in 
canoe loaded to the gun'ale, on both trips, we 
were off across a mirror-like sheet of water, 
perhaps a mile and a half wide. We went 
silently — at Bill Eraser's suggestion — and 
we were rewarded. A splash — carried miles 
in the sylvan silence — warned us that we 
were not quite alone. Then a prodigious 
splashing — and we saw, a half-mile away, 
[731 



The Steel River 



a huge bull moose race out of lily-pads and 
disappear in the forest as silent as a wraith. 

There was no luxury of revery and polite 
discussion on that second portage. Bill 
said it was "about a mile and a quarter." 
But there was no wagon. That made a 
difference. Each and every man had to 
carry. Bill himself took a canoe, a couple 
of blanket-rolls, and the cooking utensils. 
He was really quite mortified when we pointed 
out the fact that his left ear carried no burden, 
and would have corrected the oversight, had 
we said the word. A "tunk-strap" is a 
vital and docile agency of transportation, 
if you know how to use it, to put it across 
your brow to steady the load which is balanced 
cunningly upon your back, leaving the hands 
free for burdens or tumbles. Jim watched 
Bill Fraser load up and said it was all ab- 
surdly simple. He insisted upon galloping 
off into the greenwood with a neat little 
200-pound pack and was really quite peevish 
when we pruned him down to sixty. First 
[74] 



Over-Zeal and Over-Sights 

he began sprinkling cans of bacon and cups 
and other people's wardrobes and bottles 
of household remedies along the trail. It 
made trailing Jim an exciting sport and an 
exact science, but it was taking too much 
time for salvage. We secured his pack for 
him and heard him ask himself "how much 

longer the portage" was. Successively 

the "tunk-strap" dropped to his eyes, nose, 
mouth, and finally to his Adam's-apple, which 
shut off his wind and forced another in- 
terruption of the whole procession. When 
Jim staggered to the final opening on Moun- 
tain Lake he was carrying a frying-pan and a 
fishing-rod and his proud spirit and breath 
were entirely gone. 

We struck Mountain Lake in a marsh. I '11 
never quite forgive Mountain Lake for that. 
It was showing itself at such needless and 
unfair disadvantage. I think that is the 
only marsh on Mountain Lake and we had 
to flounder in the ooze and silt to load the 
canoes. Perhaps Mountain Lake was merely 
[75] 



The Steel River 



showing sound theatrical sense in delaying 
the dramatic disclosure of the splendors to 
come. Around the first bend it burst upon 
us — and stunned us. Lakes George and 
Placid, what perfunctory millponds in your 
smug exquisiteness you are compared to this 
rugged goddess of the wilds — Mountain Lake ! 

An ellipse of lapis-lazuli is Mountain Lake, 
wonderfully blue when the sun sparkles and 
buried deeply in a wonderful setting of moun- 
tains. Such mountains ! In some places the 
ascent is gradual, up heavily wooded slopes. 
In other places blood-red precipices rise sheer 
from the water. One mountain has split. 
Half has tumbled into the lake and the wall 
that remains outlines a giant, sinister Indian 
profile. Our Indian Joe contemplated it 
with visible awe. After all, the real red man 
is still worshipping his gods in the forest, the 
rocks, the winds, and the heavens. 

There can be troublesome seas for a canoe 
on Mountain Lake. It is nine miles long 
and averages, perhaps, a mile and a half 
[76] 





The Tragic Isolation of that Lighthouse!' 



De Profundis 



in width. The wind was rising, and a 
head- wind, before we had paddled the two 
overladen canoes a mile. 

Relieved from his "spell" of paddling, the 
Camp Boss, never for a moment idle in the 
all-too-short play-day, rigged up a trolHng- 
line and a spinning-spoon and dropped it 
into the blue waters in the canoe's wake. 

The Camp Boss, as I recall, was pointing 
to a gaunt dead pine that stood sentinel alone 
and desolate on a far mountain- top, when 
he gave a muttered exclamation and threat- 
ened to go backward out of the canoe. In- 
stinctively, though, he jerked and set the 
hook — in something. It was quite something, 
too. In a few minutes it was a conjectural 
point whether the something was going to 
tow the canoe and three men back to the 
portage or the canoe tow the something to the 
camping-place. 

When the Camp Boss by exercise of sheer 
biceps had hauled in, hand-over-hand, about 
thirty feet of line, the something broke water 
[771 



The Steel River 



desperately and shook its imprisoned gill 
in the air and we saw that the Camp Boss 
had a husky namaycush of about &ve 
pounds. 

It is about two and a half miles from the 
portage-entry to Mountain Lake to the 
point where the lower Steel rushes out of it 
Superior-ward. There we beached the canoes, 
climbed the high bank to a clearing, made by 
Bill Fraser for the purpose, and made camp 
in the roar of the falls. As we came ashore 
we saw trout — heavens such trout — leaping 
for flies in the oil-smooth water at the jaws 
of the rapids. 

Camp-making was hurried and perfunc- 
tory, I confess. We slapped up three tents 
on poles, which had offered other parties 
the same excellent service. We left Indian 
Joe to cut balsam for our beds, and Camp 
Cook Arthur to rig up his tripod and dig 
bacon and bread and coffee from the chaos of 
Bill Fraser's portaging. We drew rods from 
cases with palsied fingers, wet leader-boxes, 
[78] 



An Occasional Swirling Pool 

and brought forth great gaudy flies, which 
Bill Fraser immediately and sternly re- 
jected. He made us take staid Montreals, 
brown and black Hackles, demure Jenny 
Linds, with an infrequent Parmachenee Belle 
for contrast. We divided. Bill Fraser took 
Jim and the Camp Boss down the rapids 
to the "Stretch," a rioting mill-race with 
an occasional swirling pool in it. 

Marv. and Bill and I went to the point 
where Mountain Lake first begins to rip- 
ple and miirmur in the clutch of the falls, 
.'he first cast brought an answering gleam 
of a silvery, sinewy little body. Then the 
"strike" and the thrill that runs along the 
line from a hook well "set." Bill has one. 
Marv.'s shout of congratulation is choked 
by troubles of his own. There is no aux- 
iliary hand to man the landing-net. Three 
men stand side by side upon the rocks and 
simultaneously play three fish — four fish, as a 
matter of fact ; Bill had a double. We called 
it off when we had killed enough for the camp- 
[79] 



The Steel River 



dinner and enough for the camp-breakfast, 
however the Camp Boss and Jim and Bill 
Fraser might be faring down the "Stretch" 
— for we had found the place of monster- 
trout and many days very golden were ahead 
of us. 

The sun was dropping behind the moun- 
tains and Mountain Lake was a mirror of 
bewildering splendors when Cook Art. an- 
nounced the trout and coffee and fried po- 
tatoes ready for the table. The Camp Boss 
and Jim and Bill Fraser had not come. Bill 
— who by the way was distinguished from 
Bill Fraser as Exotic Bill, while the latter 
was characterized as Indigenous Bill — vol- 
unteered to go down the trail and "hurry 
'em up." As Exotic Bill had never seen 
the trail before, I had my doubts as to the 
efficacy of the hurrying-up. But Bill went. 

He had been gone about ten minutes, when 

Camp Boss and Jim and Indigenous Bill 

came in — by a "short-cut." Then Jim 

volunteered to find Bill. He had been gone 

[80] 



Somebody's Birthday 



about fifteen minutes when Bill came back 
quite apprehensive for the safety of the 
Camp Boss, Jim, and Bill Fraser. Meanwhile 
the trout were blackening and charring 
nicely and night was dropping gingerly as 
the north-night does drop. "You all sit on 
this here one," said Bill Fraser firmly, 
indicating Exotic Bill, "and I '11 go and snare 
the other. Hide-and-seek's good fun, except 
when you ain't had nothing to eat since 
sun-up." And Jim, explaining garrulously, 
was led in by the hand when there was little 
left of ten poimds of trout — but the aroma. 
It was somebody's birthday that night in 
camp. Almost anybody would agree to 
have a birthday on Mountain Lake. The 
idea, I think, was suggested by Cook Art.'s 
discovery of a bottle of Scotch in the potato- 
sack. Nobody knew how it got there, and 
Bill Fraser who had carried that sack over 
the portage was ominously eager to find out 
how it got there. However, Bill Fraser has 
the ready adaptability and forgiveness of 

[81] 



The Steel River 



the wilderness. Marv. was quite positive 
that it was his birthday. We gathered 
tin cups and spring-water and stood about 
the fire, con-scious that it was an impressive 
and ceremonious sort of a tableau vivanL 
Bill Fraser insisted that each one ''fill up** 
before he poured his own libation. We were 
all impressed with this pretty courtesy on 
Bill Fraser's part, the wilderness host, and 
respected his wishes. We expected a toast 
of unusual feeling and eloquence, or some- 
thing like that. "All got a drink?" asked 
Bill Fraser, glancing around the expectant 
group. "All right — just a minute," and 
Indigenous Bill beamingly took at a gulp 
what was left in the bottle, about three 
hands high, I should think. 

Bill Fraser explained afterward that that 
was what he always did when he "got wet 
and didn't have no extry clothes along for 
a change." 

Exotic Bill and Jim retired to their tent, 
promising each other to rise with the sun. 

[82] 




"Jim Talked Little at the Camp-Fire that Night. 



The Day after the Banquet 

One was to "take a canoe and explore the 
lake before breakfast" and the other planned 
delightedly to spring all-rosy from his 
slumbers and "dive off the rocks." 

At seven a.m., after ten minutes of riot 
and rough-house, we succeeded in hauling 
them from their balsam-beds. 

A surprising and exasperating condition 
confronted us when the next morning we 
advanced upon falls, rapids, and pools of the 
Steel. The water had been abnormally high 
for days. Indigenous Bill had noticed and 
pointed it out and feared for the result. 
However, the voraciousness of the trout 
the night before had quieted Bill's fears. 
But now in the morning the thing had hap- 
pened. The high water had brought down 
flies and grubs in myriads from the uplands. 
The trout had fed their fill. That was what 
they were doing last night. Now they were 
gorged. We were chagrined and hurt. In- 
digenous Bill was profane. We tried flies 
sober enough to appeal to the most ascetic 
[83I 



The Steel River 



of trout and flies gaudy and giddy enough 
to delight the most frivolous trout in the 
whole democracy of the Steel. Nothing 
whatever doing. I fell a victim to despair. 
I waded out, waist deep, to a rock in the 
centre of a pool, with the maelstrom about 
me, and deliberately and shamelessly cast 
with a "spinner." The Camp Boss shouted 
fisherman's ethics and morals and epithets 
and curses from the bank — while I caught 
three inquisitive, betrayed trout for luncheon. 
I submit that the most ethical and punctil- 
ious of fishermen must eat. In the afternoon 
we teased, cajoled, insinuated, and bullied 
enough trout out of the water for dinner. 
And, be it to the everlasting glory of fisher- 
manly ethics and morals and methods, it 
was the Camp Boss who did it. He would 
locate a trout and bombard him with casts, 
with an infinitude of flies and angles and 
subtle invitations, until the trout in utter 
exasperation would rush at the tangible 
evidence of his mysterious tormentor and 
[84] 




pq 



Mere Man 



hang himself. The rest of the camp wotdd 
play draw-poker with pine-cones for an hotir 
or so and then come back and cheer the 
Camp Boss. 

The next morning we were ready for less 
epicurean trout and the upper waters of 
this wild river. We cached everything we 
should n't need for five days. We had to 
tear Jim's waders and bath-gown out of his 
hands by force. He even promised to wear 
them over the portages, if necessary. But we 
had seen Jim on a portage. Pretty nearly 
due north we paddled for four miles beneath 
frowning precipices, amid the oppressive si- 
lence of that grandeur which seems not at 
all to care for the presence and applause 
of the puniest thing in the wilderness — to 
wit, mere man. 

Then the mouth of the upper Steel opened 
out suddenly. It looks much like the mouth 
at Lake Superior, sand and pebbles on both 
banks. Evidently it overflows its banks 
mightily in the spring and great deluges, 
[85] 



The Steel River 



carrying logs and brush, come roaring down, 
for the trees keep their distance respectfully 
fifty feet from the water's edge. 

As we paddled up, a caribou lifted a 
dripping nose from the water and dashed 
away silently into the dense cover. There 
is surprisingly little current here and, even 
with canoes laden with seven men and much 
grub, we swept along rapidly. 

A stupid partridge stood upon a log and 
stared at us in sheer bewilderment that was 
quite irresistible. She went into the pot 
that night. 

There are two portages to make, both 
around log-jams, one of a mile and a half 
and the other of a half-mile. Jim was un- 
expectedly temperate and unambitious. 

Again the delight of the camp. We had 
all paddled and carried and waded that day. 
The roar of the upper falls smote our ex- 
pectant ears after scarcely two hours' paddling 
next morning. Lakes, many lakes, there are 
beyond. And many fish, mighty fish. I 
[86] 



Down Smiling Waters 

say seven-pounders firmly and with an honest 
thrill of achievement and proof of photo- 
graphic record. Below we came upon huge 
rainbow trout or "hammerheads," which, I 
beHeve, never get above the first falls. 

We were at the headwaters of one of 
Superior's mightiest rivers and the least 
known and wildest of them all. There is a 
thrill, perhaps a vainglorious and theatric 
sort of a thrill, in the realization that you 
are standing where no man, save the original 
owner, the Indian, has ever stood before. 
We were far from and high above Lake Su- 
perior and there were ahead of us the leisurely 
drift down smiling waters and two weeks in 
which to fish, laugh, dream, and drink the 
delights of the wilderness proffered in brim- 
ming measure only to him who, clean and 
light of heart, seeks them. 

After all, it is much as Exotic Bill said of 
it: — "Journeys end in the achievement's 
greeting." 



[87l 



CHAPTER V 



A GOOD deal like Sinbad carrying the 
Old Man of the Sea did the ambitious 
little steamer Caribou look when she got 
otir Wagush II aboard. Generations of 
Gloucester fishermen had demonstrated the 
amazing sea-worth of Wagush II. She was 
twenty-eight feet long, pointed of nose, high of 
freeboard, and duck-like in buoyancy. Her 
twelve horse-power gasoline-engine gave her 
the strength of her convictions and a sixteen- 
foot Mackinaw tow-boat served to repress her 
youthful enthusiasm. 

The shark-nose of Wagush II protruded 
from the starboard gangway of the Caribou 
and four feet of stern dangled dizzily out 
of the port gangway. 

[88] 



Superior Smiled 



A captain with misgivings and a crew with 
rich lake-oaths had blocked her in. Thus 
burdened, the Caribou had staggered all day 
and all night northward, along the east 
shore of Lake Superior. And Superior smiled 
all day and all night, which was good, be- 
cause had Superior frowned or bristled up 
or raged, Wagush II must have slid nose- 
first or propeller-first into the depths and 
gone to the reefs crewless and alone. 

Through the starlit night the captain and 
we watched anxiously for clouds, for the 
swift, sudden winds that herald a tantrum 
of that capricious inland goddess. Dawn 
came and the smile of saturnine Superior 
broadened into a laugh. [ 

Day broke as we steamed through the 
gaunt portal-rocks of the harbor on Michi- 
pocoten Island. We were 130 miles north 
of Sault de Sainte Marie, at the granite heart 
of the land of vacation-dreams. 

Alexander Henry, Esq., hardy and nervy 
old explorer, visited Michipocoten Island in 
I89] 



*'No Landing for Boats'' 

1769 and, in his book, he leaves a quaint 
record of his impressions. It was then 
Isle de Maurepas. The Indians shunned it 
for the soundly satisfying reason that they 
thought it peopled with huge snakes. Sands 
of gold were said to be upon its shores, hence, 
too, the "Island of Yellow Sands," and 
once, when Indians had filled their canoe 
with gold, a great Savage Spirit rushed out 
upon them, and waded fathoms-deep in 
pursuit, until they threw their booty into 
the water. Alexander Henry, Esq., himself 
seemed half to believe it. 

If it had seemed a tussle to load Wagush II 
aboard at Sault de Sainte Marie with all 
the appurtenances of freight-handling, it now 
proved the merest romp contrasted to the 
work of unloading Wagush II on the fish-dock 
at Michipocoten Island. First, we found 
the dock too low and we built it up. Then 
we found the wall of the freight-house too 
high and we knocked it down. We had 
toted that dory too many hundreds of miles 
[90] 




" Wagush II Hauled us along 320 Miles of Superior' 
Shore-Line. " 



North along the Shore 

to stop at anything so trivial as demolishing 
a warehouse. 

We conscripted the Caribou's crew and the 
fishing-crew and the two cooks and a chamber- 
maid and all the able-bodied passengers. 
The launch of a real "Dreadnought" could 
have been attended with popular elation no 
more vociferous and genuine. We were 
"going north" — along the shore — whither 
the wind listed, where the fishing was good. 
That was all we said — because that was all 
we knew — and wanted to know. We had 
tackle, flies, grub, gasoline, a month of 
liberty, and Superior was smiling. The man 
who would ask for more belongs not in the 
wilderness. We were off amid cargoes of 
nondescript duffel — and cheers. 

Usually, in a tale so fragmentary, the 
personnel brings neither distinction nor clar- 
ity; generally naught but contradictions 
and remorse for the author. But the per- 
sonnel cannot honestly be dodged here. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
[91] 



"No Landing for Boats'* 

nology gave us our "chief-engineer," Marv., 
a father-confessor of frail gasoline-engines. 
The Camp Boss, of course, manned the 
wheel. Navigating-officer, sage of the men- 
dacious charts, was Bill. Second-engineer 
unanimously went to Jim, maker of auto- 
mobiles and debonair in overalls. Keeper 
of the Log, camera, scientific data, and other 
men*s consciences was I and I rode in the 
dory, at that. In the tow-boat was our red 
brother of the wilderness for now these many 
years, Joe Cadotte, Chippewa gentleman, 
very gentle; and, with him, Art., the camp 
cookee, and gallons of gasoline and huge 
tumuli of "eats." 

The harbor cuts into the south side of 
Michipocoten Island, at about its middle, 
and the island is, approximately, fifteen miles 
long and eight miles wide. But we must go 
due north to strike the main shore of Superior 
and a semi-circumnavigation was the only 
way. Still the great lake smiled. Skirting, 
just missing the treacherous reefs, the south, 
[92] 




't mt 




A Dash for Shelter 



east, and, then, north shores of Michipocoten 
Island, we made the twenty-four miles and 
went ashore for lunch at noon. And we were 
*' invited out to lunch," too. At the harbor, 
as we started, two mining engineers had come 
to us and asked us for a "lift." They had 
walked across the island the day before for 
their mail— think if that mail had proved to 
be bills and advertisements! And one had 
wrenched his ankle on the rough trail. They 
were diamond-drilling for copper— and they 
subsequently struck it, too, we heard. For 
the transportation they entertained us lav- 
ishly. We got to know these two lonely 
men intimately in a half -day, and then— the 
way of those wilderness-meetings and friend- 
ships — we waved them farewell, in all human 
probabiHty never to see them again. 

We had serious things to do and lots of 
them, to wit — make that eleven-mile dash 
across the strip of Lake Superior that sep- 
arated us from the main share and make it, 
while Superior still smiled, in time to find 
[93l 



'*No Landing for Boats" 

shelter and make our first camp for the night. 
The prospectors directed us to head due 
north and run into Pilot Harbor, the nearest 
hospitable point on the rocky main shore. 

We bowled along on the long, oily swell, 
for about five miles. Wagush's two cylin- 
ders sang a tuneful rhythm. Joe steered 
the tow-boat and Cookee Art. delved into 
sacks and boxes and inventoried the culinary 
equipment with which for four weeks he 
must meet the corporeal needs of six chron- 
ically ravenous men. 

Then, as though a gray mantle of oblivion 
had been dropped over the landscape, the 
fog-banks blew in from Lake Superior and 
blotted out the shore before and behind us. 
True, we had the compass and the course 
was unmistakable — due north. But it was 
all like sailing for eternity upon the air. The 
needle held straight, but we seemed to be 
swinging somehow always to port. Visions of 
sailing out into Lake Superior with land and 
safety so close but screened from us oppressed 
[94] 



A Swallow and a Surprise 

us. It seemed too long. We should have 
made eleven miles straightaway before this. 
It was unpleasant — very — and vacation- 
exuberance for fifteen minutes, there, went 
ebbing. 

The Camp Boss saw a swallow in the 
vapor about us. Then suddenly the whole 
North Shore, great ridges, towering rocks, 
spruces and pines and birches sprang out 
upon us with a gaunt sentinel-rock dead- 
ahead and scarcely fifty feet away. Marv. 
jumped to the throttle. Wagush II checked, 
stopped, and backed out of the ambush and 
we reconnoitred. We had the North Shore, 
anyway, and it was a good thing to hang 
onto. As the navigating officer said, it 
was "no time to play hunches in that fog.'* 
If Pilot Harbor had any sense of fitness, it 
should be in "the heart of the business dis- 
trict" somewhere and the only discreet way 
to find it was to tiptoe along the coast, 
feeling it out inch by inch until we should 
find Pilot Harbor. When Wagush pulled 
[95] 



"No Landing for Boats" 

her nose out of destruction, Joe*s boat came 
up indignantly and bumped us, but it merely 
up-ended Cookee Art. who had his head in 
the bread-tin at the moment. 

It was a debatable point whether Pilot 
Harbor was to the right or to the left. We 
could n't separate. In that fog we 'd never 
get together again. We turned to the left — 
a good, sporty guess — and ran under a check. 
We were certainly going through an opening 
— maybe only a bay. No — we were leaving 
the lake, all right. Then an opening within 
an opening and a sharp turn to the right. 
There was n't a ripple on the water here. 

"Aren't we going into a harbor?" asked 
Second-Engineer Jim. 

"We're going into something," said the 
Camp Boss, peering ahead, at the wheel. 
"I can't tell whether it's a harbor or a 
linen-closet." Another turn and then a 
sand-beach! Never a sand-beach without a 
harbor — and we knew it! We had blundered 
straight into Pilot Harbor. What perils 
[96] 



Pilot Harbor Very Good 

can a mere fog hold for a launch so rich in 
fool's luck as that? 

There isn't much in Pilot Harbor but 
shelter and a little of that is a great comfort 
when you 're coasting Lake Superior. The 
making of the first camp and the cooking 
of the first camp-meal always bring a series 
of panics. ** There 's no bacon" or "They 
left out the bread" or "We can't find the 
kerosene for the lanterns." And in the 
end they all miraculously appear. Of course 
something is always forgotten, but generally 
it is Jim's hair-tonic or Billy's hot-water 
bottle suggested by a too-doting wife. While 
we napped that night, Superior quit smiling 
and tried to blow the tops off the everlasting 
hills and Pilot Harbor felt very good. 

The next morning the Great Spirit, Nan-i- 
bou-jou, again enveloped us in fog to stay 
our departiire. But as Superior was pond- 
like we packed up, and again, under check, 
felt our way along. We kept just the tree- 
tops in view and snooped cautiously in and 
7 [97] 



"No Landing for Boats" 

out of bays, until we almost ran into the 
open door of a cook-shanty. This time we 
had bumped into a pulp- wood camp. There 's 
a good river there, too, the Pukasaw, or 
Puckoso. The maps are so diffident about 
their spelling! Twenty-foot falls there take 
their last tumble into Lake Superior. While 
Joe and the Cookee made camp, we took a 
fisherman's look at some likely-looking rocks 
at the river mouth. We killed enough fish 
for dinner in fifteen minutes and as many 
more got away with our leaders. In reef 
fishing on Lake Superior there is no telling 
when one may cast his lines in pleasant 
places or a colony of whales. 

The making and breaking of two camps 
had already brought us considerable tech- 
nique. We worked in crews and worked 
rapidly until it came to the necessity of 
unpacking a whole huge bed-roll to find 
Jim's watch which he had left in his blankets. 
That 's where Jim always left his watch. It 
became a permanent and sacred institution 
[98] 



A Smart Wind 



and on camp-breaking mornings Bill's first 
camp-task was to take Jim's watch out of 
Jim's blankets and tie it around Jim's neck 
in a double bowline knot. Our best camp- 
breaking record, I find in the Log, was 
twenty- two minutes from flapjacks to full- 
speed-ahead and that was the ripest achieve- 
ment of three weeks* training. 

Superior was again smiling and unbefogged 
when we put out of the Puckoso that morning. 
The black-flies had only just heard that 
succulent tenderfeet were theirs for the 
stinging and they chased us half a mile out 
in the lake. We had picked White Spruce 
River for the next night-camp, but we decided 
not to stop; rather, Superior decided that 
for us. A smart wind from the southwest 
brought a smarter sea along with it. Wagush 
was game for it and equal to it. But Joe's 
heavily loaded tow-boat was not, particularly 
the way the Wagush was jerking her through 
the seas. Richardson's Harbor loomed up 
opportunely. Joe, with the water to his 
[99l 



"No Landing for Boats" 

ankles, sighted it first and vigorously urged 
a landing party. If you can mentally picture 
a giant T cut into the solid rock of the shore- 
line, you can mentally picture Richardson's 
Harbor. When we found the harbor-mouth 
the seas playfully boosted us in. We coasted 
around this unruffled refuge. A deserted 
fishing-station was the only blemish on 
the scene and jumping herring gave us a 
sensation until we found them herring. 

While we lunched and smoked and found 
moose- tracks, Superior thought we had es- 
caped her and sullenly subsided. So we 
looked out of the harbor-mouth cautiously 
and made a dash for it. 

Otter Head is precisely what the pioneer, 
in his keen observation and nature-lore, 
saw fit to call it — the head of a huge otter- 
You can see it for fifty miles on a clear day. 
We did. That is, Joe did. Joe is always 
seeing and hearing things first and then we 
pretend that we do — until we really do. 
Then the lighthouse — the tragic isolation of 

[lOO] 



Laughing down Gloomy Canyons 

that lone lighthouse — loomed up around the 
point — on Otter Island. The map promised 
things behind that island and the promise 
was kept promptly, richly. 

At first, we thought it a great strip of 
quartz in the precipice. Then Joe shouted, 
"Water-fall over dere," and pointed. The 
"Ninety-Foot Falls" were taking their per- 
petual, "death-defying" leap into the lake! 
They are really twin -falls. The Rideau 
River, wearied of laughing down through 
gloomy canyons, just passes up the whole 
job — ninety feet up there on the cliff — and 
tells its water-children to shift for themselves. 
So they jump over the brink with a scream 
— and feed a myriad trout below. We 
stopped there — naturally — and fished. I 
will not say how many fish came gamily to 
the willing net. They were enough to feed 
us — that was all. 

At the foot of the falls we had another 
call. It is curious how quickly one adapts 
one's self to the isolation of the wilderness. 
[loi] 



**No Landing for Boats" 

Two days out and the sight of a stranger, 
a sail, or even smoke on the horizon will 
precipitate a perfect frenzy of curiosity. I 
never saw a man who craved man's com- 
panionship the way Captain McMinimi, 
keeper of the Otter Head light, did. He had 
sighted us from his eyrie and came skimming 
across the bay in a thirty foot Mackinaw, as 
trim and dainty as a boat-builder*s "ad." 
He had seen two "tourists" in two months. 
He asked about George Rex and Theodore 
Alleged-Rex and American League baseball 
and the Russo-Japanese treaty. It was 
gratifying to find an audience so avid and 
appreciative. We gave him salmon-flies, a 
box of Jim's cigars (they were "out-of- 
door" cigars and Jim was asleep), and a 
bottle of Scotch, and, in return. Captain 
McMinimi charted the fishing-reefs for us 
and, leading the way in his natty little boat, 
piloted us to harbor, deep down Otter Cove, 
where we made camp. He scarcely left us 
for two days. He drank in the news of the 
[102] 








Ninetv-Foot Falli 




For we had Found the Place of Monster Trout 



^•f' 



A Battered Hull 



world and the conversation and jokes of the 
camp in long, luxurious draughts. His grati- 
tude for mere human presence was pathetic. 
Last fall we heard again of Captain McMinimi 
— our host at Otter Head. It was a dis- 
patch sent out by some lone telegraph 
operator in the Canadian Pacific station at 
Heron Bay. Captain McMinimi had set 
out — ^in that same dainty little craft — for 
Heron Bay to lay in his fall supplies. He 
never reached there. They found — a week 
later — a battered hull, overturned on the 
rocks. Inexorable Superior offers a certain 
grim companionship of her own. 

We made the White Gravel River, twenty- 
five miles from Otter Head, in a half -day's 
run. The Swallow and White Spruce — both 
excellent streams for small fish — we passed up 
temporarily. The weather was good and the 
need of making time oppressed us. But 
there was no slighting the White Gravel. 
Gentlemen-fishermen, returning joyously, had 
told us of its pools and possibiHties. The 
[103] 



"No Landing for Boats" 

Log and the chart warned Navigating Officer 
Bill that we must be abreast of it. So we 
checked and ran nearer shore to reconnoitre. 
It 's a fad of Superior rivers to hide their 
mouths behind sand-bars. They 're very 
coy about it. We 'd learned to be in- 
quisitive. Else we had missed the White 
Gravel. The actual outlet was just wide 
and deep enough — through the riffle — to 
admit the Wagush to the good shelter of the 
inner basin. 

We poled in cautiously, too, because we 
knew THEY were there. You can never 
mistake the river-water that is colored like 
wine-jelly. That means fish. While Joe 
and Cookee Art, cut tent-poles and balsam 
and a tripod, we moored the launch and 
stepped out upon the sandy shore of that 
amber-filled basin to cast. They, too, 
craved human society, even as Captain 
McMinimi had craved it. Jim — the Log 
says — caught his first trout there. He had 
fished for bass and pike, possibly muscallonge, 
[104] 




:3 



U p 



o 
X 



Comforted by Kas-kas-ka-nig-gee 

and was rather inclined to be patronizing 
in a trouters' discussion. It was n't such 
a lunker — about three pounds — but Jim 
gave all the premonitory symptoms of 
apoplexy when that trout struck and broke 
water and he talked little and in hushed 
whispers at the camp-fire that night. 'i 

Two miles up the White Gravel River is 
a pool, circular, dark, deep, and peopled with 
darting shadows. We fished it in the per- 
functory, impious way that men fish all 
pools, when they are pressed for time and 
"must reach the falls" — by some law of 
stupid impatience — up and beyond. I took 
a look at that font of mystery and said, 
" On to Hudson's Bay, if you will, mad Cook 
Tourists. Here I set me down and dream.'* 
So the others climbed around the falls and 
plunged on. Oh — insatiable god of curi- 
osity! They had taken, maybe, a half- 
dozen exquisite swarthy fish from that pool. 
I smoked two pipes and took a picture. And 
the Httle kas-kas-ka-nig-gee bird ("my little 
[105] 



**No Landing for Boats" 

silver-throated friend") talked to me. Then 
the trout had cooled off. They thought the 
Great Peril had passed. They came cau- 
tiously out of their asylums in the rocks, 
from beneath sunken logs. They were again 
self-confident wild things, searching their 
prey. I cast carefully — where the others 
had not cast — and instantly the ripples took 
the food-news, the dinner-call, about that 
pool and the carnival was on. I had a Httle 
net, a spineless, maddening implement such 
as cunning sporting-goods men make and 
blundering tenderfeet buy. I got "doubles" 
and, twice, a "triple" and each time that 
net, that instrument of commercial avarice, 
would buckle or turn turtle. I shouted for 
help. But only the falls and sympathetic 
kas-kas-ka-nig-gee, who understood, answered 
me. I '11 remember that pool and the 
creel-full they made. 

A curious phenomenon was materialized 
to dash our hopes when we arrived, suc- 
cessively, at the Big Pic and Little Pic rivers. 
[106] 



Little Pic and Great Chagrin 

It was down the Big Pic — then the Pijitic — 
that the French descended from Hudson's 
Bay in 1750 where they had plundered and 
slaughtered a factory of those hardy wilder- 
ness-adventurers. We found mud, beautiful, 
yellow, liquid mud. The two rivers were 
breaking all midsummer records for high 
water. The reef fishing at the mouth of 
the Little Pic, reputed to be about the best 
on Lake Superior, was out of business for 
a month at least. Disconsolately v/e cranked 
the Wagush and moved on. 

The Log shows 160 miles covered in Wagush 
and Joe's tow-boat in that trip up the shore, 
begun at Michipocoten Island. There the 
tyranny of the calendar showed its hydra- 
head and certain inquisitive telegrams from 
forgotten ofiices awaited us at the first 
Canadian Pacific station where we called 
for two- weeks-old mail. So we were coasting 
back along the North Shore. We had to go 
to Michipocoten Harbor, on the mainland, 
this time to catch the steamer. There is 
[107] 



"No Landing for Boats'' 

an ore-carrying railroad there and a steam 
crane. We had to have that crane. It was 
easy enough to slide the Wagush into the 
water, but a very different matter to lift 
her and her good ton of avoirdupois out of 
the water. 

It 's feasible only to name those exquisite, 
lonely little streams which we sighted on 
that return cruise and found it not in our 
hearts to slight. They were the White 
Spruce, Swallow, Pike, Ghost, Eagle, Dog, 
Mountain Ash, Pickerel, and a half-dozen 
others which the map refuses to dignify 
with names at all, but which, nevertheless, 
are peopled with trout-folk. Once the com- 
mutator-shaft went ailing. Where we went 
ashore to diagnose the malady there was a 
stream, twenty feet wide and, maybe, four 
feet deep. Billy, knowing little about com- 
mutator-shafts and much about trout, cast 
instead of tinkering. We heard his frantic 
shouts for a net. Of course the net was stowed 
beneath everything else in the launch. And 
[108] 



No Landing for Sea-Gulls 

Billy, netless and single-handed, drew a 
four-pound trout out on the beach. 

It enjoyed a highly dramatic climax, that 
cruise. There is a stretch of the coast, of 
eleven miles, between Point Isacor and Boat 
Harbor, which the map frankly declares to 
be "No landing for boats." As a matter 
of fact, it 's no landing for sea-gulls. The 
shore rises straight out of the water and 
towers aloft dizzily from loo to 250 feet. 
Of course, we knew of that stretch and planned 
to get as near it as possible, wait for daylight 
and calm water, and make a dash for safety 
on the other side. Very cunning and far- 
sighted in her cunning, however, is Lake 
Superior. She pretty nearly had us — ^for 
all our caution and strategems. 

We had been storm-bound for three days 
in Otter Cove. A gale from the southwest 
raved and dared us. Time for the sailing 
of the steamer from Michipocoten Harbor 
was drawing perilously near. The fourth 
morning we were up before dawn. The day 
[109] 



"No Landing for Boats" 

promised fair. There was no wind. The 
sea was still high, but promised to subside 
if the wind kept off. We planned to make 
Ghost River where the river-basin, we were 
told, would offer shelter for the launch, camp 
there over night, and then have a day to 
race past "the bad lands." 

Three times that day the seas drove us 
ashore. Joe's boat wallowed and once was 
half-swamped. We woiild bail out, dry off 
and warm up about a drift-wood fire, and 
try it again. Steadily the sea had been 
rising and the weather thickening when 
we reached Ghost River, thirty- two miles 
from Otter Head, just at dusk, beneath 
lowering skies. Giant seas were racing in, 
with their crests crowned with wind-spray. 

And we found Ghost River choked with 
sand and no shelter! 

It was a nasty mess. We could n't stay 

here. A hard blow was coming, straight 

into that bay. We could n't go back ten 

miles or so to harbors we had passed. The 

[no] 



Hatless from the Green Abyss 

quartering seas would swamp us. And the 
eleven miles of "No landing for boats," 
of hungry reefs and dizzy precipices, were 
ahead of us. And night and a gale were 
hurrying along together. 

We held a hurried consultation. We 
looked to Joe, when we had decided, and Joe 
said, "Let's go on — Quick." We went 
"quick. " When we swung out into it again, 
green water came into our laps in barrels 
and we looked anxiously astern until we saw 
Joe and Art. emerge hatless from the green 
abyss. Then for an hour and a quarter no 
man spoke except in sharp monosyllables; 
but just looked at his watch and then out 
lakeward whence the gale and green-moun- 
tains were coming. Twice the tow-line 
snapped and we rounded-to in the smother 
and picked up Joe's wallowing boat and its 
pallid crew. Marv. hovered over the gasoline 
engine as a mother over a sick child and 
watched its every breath with a mouth full 
of heart. Had the engine faltered in that 
Iiii] 



" No Landing for Boats '' 

sea and gale beating on a rock-bound coast — 
But it was n't fun thinking about it. 

We could scarcely make out the mouth 
of Boat Harbor in the blackness and the 
surf. We had to take a chance. It looked 
like a harbor. We could n't weather it 
much more than a half -hour longer, anyway. 

" Here goes, " said the Camp Boss. "Hang 
on — as long as you can, fellows." 

And he put the wheel hard-over. Superior 
picked us up and smacked us down in the 
centre of Boat Harbor. We hurdled the 
harbor-mouth, that was all. We were flung 
into shelter and a good camp-site and warming 
drinks and a ten o'clock dinner. Superior 
had had her brutal prank with us and grown 
bored. The next morning Superior was 
smiling again and in the smile we saw the 
smoke of the Caribou. After all, smoke is 
about the fulfilment and the end of all 
earthly things — even vacation-dreams. 



[112] 



CHAPTER VI 

IN THE TROUT DEMOCRACY AND REEFS OF 
CHIPPEWA HARBOR 

THE very best that I can do is to say 
that all this happened on the east- 
north shore of Lake Superior within fifty 
miles of Gargantua, which is itself about one 
hundred miles north of Sault de Sainte Marie. 
It is unfortunate that I must be thus evasive 
and non-committal at the very onset, but 
fisherman*s ethics will justify this stand. 
About trout-rivers and reefs you hunted 
out or stumbled over by yourself you can 
prattle all you please. They are yours and 
you can haunt them or tell unsympathetic 
editors about them or romance to dinner- 
parties about them and do nothing worse than 
make a fool or a bore of yourself. But 
when you are rowed to them in another 
man*s boat, by another man's Indian, on 
« [113I 



In the Trout Democracy 

top of another man*s breakfast, with another 
man's cook to fry your trout, and a flask 
filled with another man's appetizer in your 
pocket — why, then those rivers and reefs 
are really not yours to prattle about. You 're 
a camp-guest — sacred and ancient mutual 
obligation of the wilderness — that 's what 
I was — camp guest. 

And such camping! Why, we had grape- 
fruit for breakfast and cocktails before din- 
ner! The third morning up there the Editor 
was impatient because the camp-manicurist 
was n't on the job. Personally, I was n't 
accustomed to Indian-packers who run up 
and firmly and reproachfully take an oar or 
an axe out of your hands, much as the 
lord-chamberlain would rebuke King George 
for trying to crank his own runabout. It 
was incredibly luxurious. The capacity of 
camp-guest brings its compensations. Before 
I left I had Indians sharpening my lead- 
pencils for me. The greatest lesson the 
wilderness teaches, perhaps, is adaptability. 
[114I 



"A Sailor Home from the Sea" 

This much I can safely tell you of that 
camp! Besides being pretty close to Gar- 
gantua, it is a wonderful little harbor, another 
four-fingers-and-thumb thrust into the shore- 
line of Lake Superior, and we were encamped 
upon the nail of the middle finger with a 
rocky island effectually blocking the entrance 
and warning back the booming surf — Call it 
Chippewa Harbor, if you like, and that 's 
pretty close, too. Beside my tent was a 
grave. A sailor, just a nameless sailor, had 
been washed up there ten years ago. The 
Indians found him. They put stones over 
him against the wolves and lynxes and a 
rough cross at his head. And he slept there 
beside me, a tired soul "home from the sea," 
a very quiet bunkie, and his parents, per- 
haps his wife and children, will never know 
the place where he is sleeping. 

Camp was ready for us when the steamer 

Caribou, whistling blithely, hove-to and 

dropped us into the camp-boats which for 

hours had waited outside the headlands for 

[115] 



In the Trout Democracy 

us. A cook in white cap and apron was 
frying trout — and cooling cantaloupe! It 
was too absurd — and intoxicating ! 

Our Host met us — with a whoop and a 
delirious waltz upon the rocky beach. That 's 
the way the Host always greets his guests in 
his camps. He has five of them — camps, 
not guests. They are duck-shooting camp 
and deer-shooting camp and prairie-chicken 
camp out west and quail camp in Georgia 
and tuna camp in CaHfornia. That host, 
by the way, is now Governor of the Common- 
wealth of Michigan. There is only one man 
who knows the Superior country as well as 
our Host and that *s the Judge — but, as I 
said, the camp-cookie was frying trout. 

There we met "Tommie," a very old and 
amiable Chippewa full-blood from Batche- 
wana Bay. Tommie was just picking up my 
rain-coat carefully by the tail, that two pipes 
and a tobacco-pouch and a box of one htmdred 
cigarettes might tumble out of the pockets 
into the water with the least possible re- 
[ii6] 



Gargantua Light Is More Hospitable than it Looks. 




Abandoned by the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company 



Cognomen or College Yell 

sistance. Our Host introduced him. He 
said, "This is Nish-i-shin-i-wog, " which 
means "Friend of Men," which we all knew 
with the exception of the Cartoonist. He 
said, "If that isn't a college-yell, I didn't 
catch the name," and the Indian beamed 
delightedly and said, "Make um Tommie," 
which forthwith the Cartoonist did. Tommie 
Nish-i-shin-i-wog has a place in this narrative 
farther on. 

It was a funny thing about Nate. He was 
a camp-guest, too. 'Back in civilization 
comparatively few men called him Nate 
and held their jobs, because he was president 
of a big pubHc service corporation. Several 
thousand employees called him "Mister" 
with awe. And, because he was president 
of a public service corporation, the gamboge 
dailies called him a variety of things. But 
in camp he was "Nate," even to Tommie, who 
revelled in the rare monosyllable. Never, 
outside of one of Mr. Robert W. Chambers' 
heroes, have I seen a man piscatorially so 
[117] 



In the Trout Democracy 

well equipped as Nate. His accumulated 
rod-cases and leader-boxes alone gave the 
steamer Caribou quite a list to port. He 
owned stock in several dozen trout-preserves 
and belonged to several thousand fishing 
clubs. He was accustomed to wait for a 
wire from a keeper that a trout had actually- 
been seen. Then he would bump elbows 
with five hundred fellow-members and stalk 
that trout with cunning and technique. 
When it was caught and tipped the scale 
magnificently at a full half-pound, its captor 
would give a wine dinner and have the trout 
taxidermed tor ''the trophy room," and the 
club would present him with a silver dinner 
service. 

So Nate came to the waters of four-pound 
brook trout with skepticism. After the 
first camp-dinner Tommie took Nate in the 
work-boat and rowed him about a quarter of 
a mile across the harbor to the rocks. They 
were gone maybe an hour. It was dark 
when they came back. Nate came up to 
[ii8] 



When Man Enters at His Peril 

the camp-fire with a landing-net full of six 
fish, for the smallest was two pounds. ** Think 
of it," he said awedly; "I was figuring it 
out rowing back to camp. Why, I pay about 
$1500 a year to catch minnows too small 
for bait for these whoppers." Thereafter 
Nate and Tommie were as Damon and Pyth- 
ias. Tommie knew the holes, and than Nate 
I never saw a prettier fly-caster or a better, 
cleaner sportsman. 

There is a little river flowing into Superior 
just where the bones of a wrecked lake- 
freighter lie bleaching on the reef. It was 
late in November when a gale from the north- 
west accompanied by a snow-storm and zero 
weather drove the vessel from her course. 
They had tried to make Michipocoten 
Harbor but the gale would have none of it. 
Her powerful engines were useless and the 
seas flung her into that cove and piled her 
on the rocks so close to shore that the crew 
made it, scarcely wetting their feet. Then, 
however, their real hardships began. They 
[119] 



In the Trout Democracy 

had twenty miles to go over a trailless and 
incredibly rough country. We found a sled 
which they had made of wire and barrel- 
staves. Two of them reached Michipocoten 
Harbor. One died there from his exposure. 
The other had a frozen foot and leg ampu- 
tated. Help was sent back and the rest of 
them were taken from the pilot-house which 
had washed ashore and still stands there 
among the balsams to bear witness to Su- 
perior's retribution when winter drops the 
gates and man enters at his peril. 

But it was n't the wreck that interested 
us in that river. There were trout in it. 
Jim found them. Jim, you see, played first- 
base on the Country Club baseball team 
and he could n't see why he should n't keep 
his throwing arm in shape on a camping 
expedition on Lake Superior. So he brought 
a mit and glove and a few balls along. When 
he produced them we laughed derisively. 
Then one of the Indians proclaimed himself 
the short-stop of the All- Chippewa team. 
[120] 




o ^- 

O 0^ 

2 2 

Q H 



Technique of the Judiciary 

Our Host remembered he was a college- 
pitcher in the early-somethings and the 
Judge himself had a "wing" that defied 
the ravages of time and the sedentary ten- 
dencies of a judicial career. We had team- 
practice regularly after breakfast. In a 
quick throw to catch an imaginary runner 
off first, I threw perfectly to the centre of 
the little river. That 's how Jim discovered 
the trout. 

One morning Jim offered to take the Judge 
up the river. That pleased the Judge and 
he let Jim take him. When Jim — that was 
his first trout-fishing experience in that 
country — heard that night at dinner that the 
Judge had fished that river for forty-two 
years and was the only white man that 
had seen its headwaters, Jim was actually 
embarrassed. But Jim was rewarded. He 
saw the Judge fish — with a little two-and- 
a-half-ounce stream -rod. I had often won- 
dered how the Judge could follow me down 
a stream and double my kill day after day. 

[121] 



In the Trout Democracy 

What Jim narrated that night at dinner 
dissolved the mystery. 

It was a small river. A pound-fish in it 
was an achievement. It seems that the 
Judge got a big rise in a pool. Jim went on 
down the river, waited an hour for the Judge, 
and came back. The Judge had just changed 
all his flies for the sixth time. The fish 
was still wary. Then the Judge sat down 
and smoked and let the fish forget the whole 
incident. Then he changed his flies again 
and worked around to the other side of the 
pool, trying a new angle. Jim was making 
remarks by this time and the Judge urged 
him to go down to camp, because he, the 
Judge, had a mission in life and he was 
going to stay on the job and fulfil it. 

After the third intermission and two hours 
and a half of actual manoeuvring and strate- 
gem and patience and most finished tech- 
nique, the Judge teased that fish into rising 
again. Then he struck him and landed him, 
two and a half pounds — just the weight in 

[122] 



Two Miles Perhaps 



ounces of his rod — of sinew and savagery 
and deep mahogany color. 

Somewhere, about two miles back of camp, 
there was a lake. Camp had done no fishing 
for two days. We had as many fish as we 
could eat and no man wovild defy public 
sentiment by killing more. I thought of 
that lake and the possibility of seeing, 
perhaps photographing, a moose among its 
lily-pads. I took camera, Colt, compass, a 
steel rod and spinner and started for an old 
blazed trail which began a mile down the 
Superior shore. Our Host hailed me. He 
said he wanted some exercise himself, but 
I discerned his real reason in suspicion of 
my woodcraft and a pardonable propensity 
to lose one's self in the tamarack-swamps. 
Frankly, I was glad of this guide, the best 
woodsman in the whole north country. 

We found the blaze and followed it at a 

pace that must have been a violation of the 

local speed ordinance. As we went our 

Host remembered that five years before he 

[123I 



In the Trout Democracy 

had built and floated a raft on that little 
lake and thought it must be there yet — if we 
could find it. When we got the first glint 
of its waters, we slowed down and went 
cautiously. 

"Look, look!" whispered our Host. 
"There's one! There's another and an- 
other!" 

A great bull moose, a cow, and a calf — 
evidently they had seen or scented us — were 
moving off into the shadows, without a 
sound. That glimpse of wild life in the 
heart of the wilds was worth the two miles 
up-hill. We circumnavigated that lake — 
and no raft. Reeds and lily-pads fringed 
its heavily wooded shores. It was so still 
that our voices reverberated like cannon. 
I lighted a pipe and laid down the steel 
rod. 

"What did you bring that for?" asked our 
Host. 

"I thought there might be pike in the 
lake," I answered somewhat dubiously. 
I124] 



Fought it Out Fish to Fish 

"There are pike," said our Host. 

"And no raft," I ventured. 

"Are you afraid to get wet?" suggested 
our Host. 

Of course I was n*t. I may have been 
a minute before. But now wading an un- 
known lake of unguessed depths was about 
the best thing I did. I was just a little 
nettled. With rod in right hand and the 
spinner dangling I plunged boldly in — I had 
forgotten about the silt-bottom which is 
about as firm and satisfying a thing to walk 
upon as a sidewalk of thunder-clouds. 
When I was down to the waist, I tossed my 
watch, revolver, and camera ashore. Then 
I found a submerged twig and stood upon it 
to cast. The spinner went shrieking out 
forty feet or so, just beyond the lily-pads. 
There was a splash ten feet away. A big 
fish had thought of something. Then a 
swirl and another splash and I, standing on 
a rotten twig, was hooked to a submarine. 
Of course the twig broke. I went down to 
I125] 



In the Trout Democracy 

arm-pits, then to neck. Then I began 
swimming and that pike and I fought it 
out among the lily-pads, as fish to fish. At 
last I got close enough to shore to throw a 
convulsed comedian the rod and he dragged 
a six-pound pike out in the bushes. I needed 
the run home in the twilight to set up circu- 
lation and shake off the mud. 

"The joke of the jokes," admitted our 
Host, "is the fact that I had n't the slightest 
suspicion there was a pike within five miles. 
I just wanted to see you swim." I laughed 
perfunctorily a chilling laugh. 

All pink and glowing we were dashing 
tent-ward from the lake bath that morning 
when Tommie Nish-i-shin-i-wog interrupted 
us. He had just come with pails of water 
for Cookee. Tommie had something weighty 
on his mind. We could see that. 

"Bear-track— big one— oh, very big!—" 

said Tommie, with his two hands together 

for purposes of graphic illustration: "Come 

see!" We did — and we saw — it was made 

I126] 




M 
^ 



Tracks and Artistic Foreboding 

in the wet sand — not fifty feet from the cook- 
tent, not seventy feet from our own profound 
and virtuous slumbers. And such a track! 
It looked a good deal like a track such as a 
seven-foot, barefoot man might make — 
only the claws were there. We were all 
thrilled and pleased — save the Cartoonist. 
He was frankly oppressed. Several times 
during the day the Cartoonist went down 
to the beach and looked at that bear-track, 
spanned it with his fingers and came back 
ominously shaking his head. All day he 
talked of his hypothetical meeting with a 
giant bear or wolf-pack or hungry lynx 
family. He brooded over it. We couldn't 
cheer him. That evening about the camp- 
fire the Indians outdid one another in tales 
of dreadful encounters with wild beasts. 
Our Host showed a scar on his arm left by 
a wounded she-bear, he said, and the Car- 
toonist listened fascinated by the horror of it. 
The Cartoonist and I bunked together in 
the tent nearest the thicket of juniper and 
I127] 



In the Trout Democracy 

tag-alder that hemmed in the camp. He 
slept in a Jaegar sleeping-bag, a luxurious 
provision of our Host; I upon the softest 
bed in the world, balsam-boughs, and my 
pillow was against the rear wall of the tent. 
While we donned our couch-draperies the 
Cartoonist continued to discuss gloomily 
our chances of escaping the digestive organs 
of some hungry wood-monster. I asked 
him at last if he did n't know the camp was 
"playing horse" with him and he was genu- 
inely relieved and grateful. In fact, for the 
first time in sixteen hours he forgot the 
bear-track. 

I had n*t been asleep when I first heard the 
sound. It came three times before I decided 
to speak. I thought the Cartoonist was 
moving in his canvas sarcophagus. I asked 
him why he did n 't go to sleep. 

"That isn't me," said the Cartoonist 
with the bad grammar of a genuine panic. 
" There 's something outside the tent trying 
to get in." 

[128] 



Something with a Snort 

"What had we better do?" asked the 
Cartoonist. 

"We might sing," I suggested. 

Then it happened! The sound of our 
giggles moved the something-outside to 
action. With a snort the something began 
lifting the canvas directly beneath my left 
ear. I arose horizontally in the air and landed 
in a rigid kneeling position, facing the in- 
truder. As I did so, I believe, I exclaimed 
fervently, "My God!" 

"That's right, old man," said the Car- 
toonist. "Whatever it is, let's get the 
Deity on the job just as soon as we can. " 

"Get the lantern," I said. I heard the 
Cartoonist floundering and muttering. Then 
he said, "Say — I'm tied in this blankety- 
blank thing. Sleeping-bag — hell ! It *s a 
fire- trap. That's what it is." 

I got him out, I think, by the hair. We 

had just lighted the lantern with trembling 

fingers when the something bumped into the 

tent and I cotild see the outline of a very 

9 [129I 



In the Trout Democracy 

bulky form. I kicked it with a socked foot 
and it crashed off into the bushes, making 
about as much noise as a neurotic milch- 
cow might make. Armed each with a 
hob-nailed boot, we sallied forth pajamaed. 

"If it *s a bear I '11 give him a black-eye, 
anyway," said the Cartoonist. 

First, I found a stout little stick about two 
feet long. It looked most serviceable, until 
I found one double the weight and length. 
So I gave the first stick to the Cartoonist. 
Rapidly he made the inevitable comparison 
and said: 

"Here — I 've been short-changed on these 
sticks." We started determinedly for the 
outfit-tent to get my revolver and had gone 
maybe fifty feet down the black trail — when 
the lantern went out. Simultaneously there 
was a snort and crash in the bushes beside us. 
The Cartoonist and I clinched. Also we shout- 
ed — cheerily — to the rest of camp. The Editor, 
thrusting his head out of his tent, said things 
which only an irritable editor, unfamiliar 
[130] 



Theories and Blazing Logs 

with the facts, can say. But I noticed that 
the Indians replenished the fires and took 
their guns to bed with them. As for the 
Cartoonist, he conscripted a rifle, two re- 
volvers, an axe, and a hunting-knife and, on 
top of his sleeping-bag, laid him down to 
pleasant dreams. 

With two men in camp so familiar with 
the "language, customs, and laws" of the 
wilderness as were our Host and the Judge, 
it was inevitable that there be much dis- 
cussion, at table and about the fire, of the 
lore of lake, stream, and woods. I quite 
filled a note-book, writing in the glow of 
birch logs. The Judge had a theory, based 
upon forty years of observation and abun- 
dantly confirmed by practice right there in 
two striking incidents. The Judge contended 
that the big trout frequently takes a fly out 
of sheer belligerency. He is guarding his 
home-hole and resents the intrusion. That 
was the reason the Judge exasperated the 
two-and-a-half pounder up the river to rise 
[131] 



In the Trout Democracy 

after haggling him for two and a half hours. 
It came forcibly to me, too, in a way that I 
shall tell. 

But the ** technical talk** wearied Jim. 
The Scourge of the Nature-Fakirs still dom- 
inated his imagination, you see. He saw 
too much romance and pure imagination in 
it. He was scornful. One day when we 
returned to camp Jim met us all glowing with 
excitement. He said he had done a little 
*' nature-study" himself and had found a 
** cuckoo's nest. " We assured him the north- 
woods was cuckooless, but he clung to it 
bravely. At last he consented to lead us 
to his find. We started next morning, Jim 
leading, the rest strung out in Indian-file. 
Over ridges, down vales, through swamps 
and canyons we went, Jim ostentatiously 
blazing trees and theatrically making obser- 
vations as we went. It was almost noon 
when Jim came back and halted us. "Now 
we must go cautiously and quietly," he said, 
**so we won't frighten the mother-cuckoo 
[132] 



A Grasshopper Grievance 



off the nest." Still we thought it best to 
humor him and tiptoed another mile or so. 
Then Jim crept up to a black-alder bush. 
With infinite care and skill he parted the 
branches and said dramatically: "There is 
your cuckoo's nest." 

We peered in and beheld a cute little fig- 
basket with four very fresh olives in it. 

But about the belligerency of old trout. 
The Judge and I, with Tommie Nish-i-shin- 
i-wog and the work-boat and a skillet and 
lunch, had started out straight from an early 
breakfast. It was my last day in the land 
of Vacation Dreams and I longed for an 
incident that might make a fitting centre- 
piece for the memory of the trip. I got it, 
all right. We rowed along the reefs for five 
miles. The Judge got one fish and two 
other rises. That was all. The surface 
of the water was dotted with grasshoppers. 
We told each other that the fish were gorged 
and Tommie agreed with us. We said we 'd 
go ashore, lunch on the Judge's fish, and look 
[133I 



In the Trout Democracy 

up an old trail from Sault de Sainte Marie to 
Michipocoten, which the Judge thought ran 
close to the lake-shore at that point. We 
started back to camp about two in the after- 
noon. The grasshoppers were still holding 
their impromptu regatta. If anything, there 
were more of them. Rather perfunctorily 
we began to cast. 

There was nothing perfunctory about the 
response. We had killed a dozen fish in 
the first mile, casting into holes full of silly 
bobbing grasshoppers. At last we came to 
a place where a mountain had split in two 
and half of it toppled into the lake. There 
were great half-submerged boulders, big as 
the Caribou, all about. Beside one of these 
was a hole, showing the green of depths and 
the shadow that the big chaps like. " There 's 
a likely hole, Judge," I shouted from the 
bow— "Try it." 

"You can reach it better than I," said the 
Judge. "You'll get one there." 

I saw my first cast was going to fall a little 
[134] 




The New Race in the Lap of the Race that is Passi 



ng. 



The Reel Screamed 



short. I tried to stop it in mid-air, but the 
dropper-fly just rested for an instant on the 
water five feet from the hole. In fact, I 
had started the back-cast when there was 
a splash that made us look at each other 
with bulging eyes. 

"Quick — get back there,** said the Judge. 

I nearly got Tommie's ear, but the flies, all 
three of them, a gaudy Parmachenee Belle, 
a Montreal, and a Royal Coachman, settled 
directly over the hole. He had the Par- 
machenee before the Montreal was really 
wet. When I struck him with that four- 
ounce rod, he was so solid that I thought 
for a minute I had actually hooked a rock. 
But for just a minute. Tommie started 
madly for deeper water, with that great fish 
pacing him. The reel screamed shrilly. 
He took more line than I realized for when 
he did break water he was so far off I thought 
I 'd lost him. 

"Start him back quick, before he recovers," 
said the Judge. "Good Lord — what a fish! 
[135] 



In the Trout Democracy 

Don't hurry him. He '11 fight you half an 
hour." And he did. Precisely seven times 
I had that old patriarch within twelve feet 
of the boat, Tommie praying into the net. 
And seven times he went away again. Each 
time that I snubbed him I thought it the 
last. I shouted, implored, stormed, and, 
I 'm afraid, cussed. My arms ached and my 
nerves were tense as piano-strings. We 
had drifted a mile off shore. 

**I think he'll do now," said the Judge. 
"Give me the net and remember I won't 
try it unless you can lift his head out of 
water. " 

Inch by inch he came in then, a steady 
desperate resistance — no more mad rushes. 
Twenty feet, fifteen feet, ten feet! I could 
see him now and I gasped. 

"Steady now," whispered the Judge. 
"Head out — remember." 

Tommie shipped his oars. 

I drew a long, hot breath. 

"Now," said the Judge. 
[136] 



Conclusions and Flasks 

There was a swish of that net — oh how 
skilful — a flurry of spray. He hit the 
gun 'ale. Tommie slapped him and he tum- 
bled into the boat — imhooked! 

" Mon-ta-me-gus — hurrah!" said Tommie 
Nish-i-shin-i-wog. 

"Tommie," said the Judge, "your unprece- 
dented emotion is eminently justifiable. 
You *11 find the flask in the tin box under 
the second seat." 

He was a little better than five pounds — 
and a brook trout — and there were other 
flasks in camp, which proves the Judge's 
point that big trout bite from belligerency 
and my point that Superior is the land of 
Vacation Dreams. 



[137] 



CHAPTER VII 

A BEATIFIC ERROR AND A SECRET MISSION 

WHEN a North Shore fisherman meets 
a brother North Shore fisherman 
the conversation is quite certain to gravitate 
to the region of the historic Michipocoten, 
down which the canoe-flotillas of the Hudson 
Bay Company once came paddling and 
singing from the Great Bay to Sault de Sainte 
Marie. They will talk about the Michi- 
pocoten*s colorful and not entirely honorable 
history; its falls, a hundred and eighty feet 
high, and its miles upon miles of boiling rapids 
of which they have possibly heard. Then 
the North Shore fisherman will assume an 
expression of wood-wisdom quite profound 
and say to his brother — ^if his brother has n't 
said it first: 

"Funny thing, there 're no trout in the 
Michipocoten." 

[138] 



The Ancient Colloquy 



And the brother will retort with equal 
gravity and finality: 

"Nothing for 'em to feed on. Wrong kind 
of water." 

The first North Shoreman says: 

"Yep." 

And each feels that he has, indeed, found a 
kindred spirit in the wilderness and an appre- 
ciator worthy of his pearls of wisdom. 

I have heard that colloquy, according to 
statistics of the Log, 5179 times in my 
considerable journeys to the Lake Superior 
country. Before we ourselves knew anything 
of the Michipocoten country we used to 
discuss this ' ' no-trout-in-the- Michipocoten ' » 
theme and wonder why it appealed so potently 
to the imagination of the average North 
Shore fisherman, which is not habitually 
morbid. It got so, that whenever we met a 
strange fisherman on the steamer or train 
or portage or at a fishing-station we 'd de- 
liberately manoeuvre the conversation around 
to the Michipocoten and then, by a spirited 
[139] 



A Beatific Error 



dash, try to beat him to the trite and tra- 
ditional observation. But we always found 
him suspicious and alert. " No-trout-in-the 
Michipocoten " seems to be as permanent 
a fixture in the Lake Superior country as 
the Aurora Borealis or the rock of petrified 
Nan-i-bou-jou. 

During the first three years of quite 
ceaseless reiteration, I accepted this slogan 
implicitly. I was receptive and tender- 
footish. Slowly it dawned upon me that 
there must be something wrong with a con- 
clusion of which 5179 gentlemen-fishermen 
were so cock-sure, so belligerently and un- 
reasonably sure. 

Then one day, wading up the mad little 
Puckoso River, I came upon the tepee of 
an Indian, hunting, — Mr. Maj-i-nuten. He 
had been a canoe-man for the Honorable 
H. B. C. himself. Seeking to impress and 
awe that Indian as I myself had been im- 
pressed and awed, I drew myself up, looking 
very knowing indeed, and let it go: 
[140] 




William Teddy Embarrassed and George Andre 
Resigned. 



Speaks Maj-i-nuten 



"Funny there 're no trout in the Michi- 
pocoten River." 

The effect upon Maj-i-nuten, as we sat 
there smoking on a rock in the rapids, was 
most disappointing and humiliating. The 
hallowed observation failed entirely to im- 
press and awe Maj-i-nuten. "He blew a 
whiff from his pipe and a scornful laugh 
laughed he." It wasn't quite scornful — 
it was just a laugh bubbling with whole- 
hearted and utterly uncontrollable enjoyment. 
Maj-i-nuten sobered at the sight of my 
embarrassment and said: 

"Well — you know — it's strandge t'ing 
'bout dat. I guess so mebbe dat story she 's 
de oldest dam lie what I know." 

Silently there among the spruces Maj-i- 
nuten and I shook hands. He gave me the 
particulars and the proof. It was all very 
simple — as I supposed it must be. Maj- 
i-nuten had trapped up the Michipocoten 
the winter before — every winter — and occa- 
sionally carried mail in the summer. He 
[141] 



A Beatific Error 



had seen the trout. Then Maj-i-nuten told — 
what I already knew — that since the com- 
pletion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 
1880, the fur- traders found it unnecessary 
to descend the Michipocoten to ship the 
furs and get supplies and, instead, ended 
their canoe- voyages from James Bay at 
Missanabie, a station and Hudson Bay 
Company post on the main line of the Cana- 
dian Pacific. That is near the Height of 
Land and above the headwaters of the 
Michipocoten River. For fifteen years now 
there have been mining-operations on the 
Michipocoten for ten miles up-stream from 
Lake Superior. The blasting has killed and 
driven out the trout. 

Perhaps you already see what Maj-i-nuten 
and I threshed out together in the roar of the 
Puckoso's rapids. Fishermen, finding no trout 
— naturally — in the first ten miles of the 
Michipocoten, sprang to the conclusion that 
there were no trout in the whole sixty-odd 
miles of the Michipocoten River. And, 
[142] 



" Lots of 'Em " 



there being no traffic or occasion for traffic 
on the river since the H. B. C. canoe-flotillas 
were taken off in 1880 — thirty years ago, — 
there was no one — but Maj-i-nuten — actually 
to know of the fierce, wild things that peopled 
and haunted those rapids. In a flash I saw 
how the fallacy of *'no-trout-in-the-Michi- 
pocoten" had originated and had been 
perpetuated. And I thanked heaven — and 
Maj-i-nuten — for it. Indeed as the tremend- 
ous significance of the conclusion dawned upon 
me, I think I slapped Maj-i-nuten upon the 
back — even waltzed with him. I know I 
gave him my tobacco-pouch and fly-book. 

It simply meant that a hasty conclusign, 
developed to the dignity of a scientific 
dictum by garrulous campers, had kept 
trout-fishermen off the Michipocoten for the 
last thirty years. What must the fishing 
be, then? Maj-i-nuten held his hands about 
three feet apart, grinned, and said, "Lots of 
'em." 

The winter that followed — ^last winter — 
[143] 



A Beatific Error 



was full of dreams that were gorgeous and 
preparations that were feverish. I besought 
Ottawa for maps, and Ottawa promptly 
and courteously swamped me with maps 
of everything in the Dominion of Canada, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the 
international boundary to the Arctic circle 
— with the exception of the Michipocoten 
River. I wrote back to Ottawa, grateful 
but insistent upon the Michipocoten River. 
Then Ottawa packed up and mailed me all 
the maps of Baffin's Bay and the Canadian 
Rockies that had been overlooked in the 
first shipment. Then, wholly by chance, 
I heard of an ex-newspaper man in the office 
of the Minister of PubHc Works, Toronto. 
My heart sings songs of praise whenever I 
think of that newspaper man and the generous 
destiny that revealed him to me. He went 
up into the musty attic and dug out an old 
map of the "Michipocoten Mining Division 
of the District of Algoma, Ontario, scale 
two miles to the inch." The engineers who 
[144] 



Ecstatic Lunch 



made that old map knew their job and loved 
their work. Subsequent events proved that 
map's accuracy to be remarkable. 

The finding of that map inaugurated the 
whole ecstatic campaign of preparation. 
The North Shore Club tiptoed into the 
private dining-room of the University Club 
for lunch. We pulled down the shades and 
plugged up the keyhole and put cotton in 
the ears of the waiter. We organized the 
campaign. Four men pledged themselves 
to go. That meant four Indian packers — 
one of them a cook — and four canoes. We 
must have at least one man who knew the 
Michipocoten River. The others must be 
experienced canoe-men. We decided to out- 
fit at Sault de Sainte Marie, Ontario, to 
save freight and duties and complications. 
All this meant lively and immediate corre- 
spondence. We ordered three A-tents, 7 by 
9, and engaged four Peterboro canoes, each 
17 feet long and capable of carrying two 
men and duffel. We had to get licenses 
10 [145I 



A Beatific Error 



for the guides, too, from the Canadian 
government and fishing licenses for ourselves. 
The courtesy of Superintendent of Game and 
Fisheries Tinsley lightened very appreciably 
the burden of preliminary detail. 

Altogether, that was a very busy though 
joyous lunch that the North Shore Club 
had that day. In fact there was little time 
to indulge in the delights of anticipation 
during those weeks before July 27th at last 
rolled around. We had engaged three In- 
dians to join us at Michipocoten Harbor. 
The other Indian had sworn to meet me at 
the hotel, Sault de Sainte Marie, at three 
o'clock the afternoon of July 27th. 

I have yet to participate in or witness the 
departure of a camping party that was un- 
accompanied by a hearty panic for all hands. 
That is the final hour of reckoning, too late 
for a remedy, when everybody remembers 
what he has forgotten and fearfully antici- 
pates what probably will be forgotten. All 
day, on that July 26th, I had been sending 
[146] 



Preliminary Panics 



bouyant telegrams on my way up the State 
of Michigan, fresh from a tennis tournament, 
to join the North Shore Club. When I 
staggered off the train, lugging rod-case, 
camera, duffel-bags, and creel, I beamed at 
the thought of the riotous welcome in store 
for me. As a matter of record, those of the 
waiting North Shore Club that did not greet 
me with chilling languor, greeted me with 
open hostility. 

Instead of shouting, "Here he is, boys!" 
and slapping me on the back and relieving 
me of my traps and offering to open white- 
labelled bottles for me and singing songs 
of youth's springtime and good cheer, they 
glared down on me and muttered: 

"Well — where in h have you been?" 

It took me some time to get to the bottorn 
of the cataclysm which, apparently, had 
overwhelmed them. They had all arrived 
in 'The Soo" about twenty-four hours ahead 
of me and each, according to his temperament 
and opportunities and tastes, had developed 
[147] 



A Beatific Error 



the panic that best suited his purposes. 
The A-tents were n't ready. One of the 
canoes was too small ; it could n't possibly 
be made to do. We should n't have time — 
just one whole day, that 's all — to buy 
supplies and get everything aboard the boat. 
Besides all that, all of them felt — largely 
intuitively — that the guides would disap- 
point us, that we should n't be able to find 
the boat-landing, and that it would rain, 
possibly snow. Destiny certainly dumped 
me down into a nice little family reunion of 
the Gloom Brothers. First, I got them all 
sitting around a table. It was a warm 
night and I called the waiter. When the 
waiter had made his third trip we began 
to see light, even a little hope ahead. We 
divided up into rescue-parties. Jim and 
Fred were to get the tents, any tents, and the 
four canoes, any four canoes, aboard the 
steamer Caribou — and sit upon them until 
the Caribou should be well out in Lake 
Superior. His Lordship — he was an English- 
[148] 



Costly Bombardments 



man, and a bully good fellow, that 's all — and 
I were to buy the supplies, tobacco, dish- 
towels, stimulants, and all, get the fishing 
licenses, put them aboard the Caribou — 
and sit upon them, right opposite, if possible, 
the place where Jim and Fred were sitting 
upon their cargo. 

We were almost light-hearted when we went 
to bed in the hotel that night, so considerably 
had the cloud of foreboding been lifted. 
His Lordship even hummed a snatch of a 
very English hunting song and tried a very 
English joke as he was drawing his bath. 

That brings us down to July 27th, the day 
of the sailing. It opened at 6.30 a.m., 
catching Fred between snores — with a deluge 
of telegrams — all for Fred. His office had 
to have him back right away and, to tell him 
all about it, his office did n't care how much 
it paid into the yawning coffers of the Western 
Union, either. Fred and his office bombarded 
each other spiritedly with fifty-word de- 
spatches until noon. Then Fred did a wise 
ti49] 



A Beatific Error 



thing and discrete thing. He began putting 
all his office's telegrams into his duffel-bag 
unopened. He opened them twelve hours 
later — fifty miles out in Lake Superior. 
As a result his office wired its head off for 
two days and then shut up — for three weeks. 
Every man must teach his office its place 
once a year or so. 

By three o'clock — arrayed in all the 
splendors of camping-togs, all 1910 model — 
we had every essential and slippery article 
of freight and baggage aboard the Caribou 
and were sitting upon it — all save the Indian 
cook. I went back to the hotel to keep my 
"date" with him at three o'clock. Came 
four o'clock, then five o'clock — but never 
the Indian. I rushed back to the Caribou 
and jerked the North Shore Club off the 
baggage-piles. We organized a cook-hunt. 
Sailing-time was approaching and not one 
of us — more shame to us — had enough 
confidence in the others' culinary skill to 
trust to necessity and inspiration. We offered 
[150] 



A Cookless Departure 



a bounty of $5, then $10, then $15 per cook, 
dead or alive, delivered Caribou f. o. b. by 
seven p.m. 

When the gang-plank of the Caribou was 
hauled aboard and the lines cast off, the 
North Shore Club was hanging over the rail 
looking longingly shoreward, cookless. The 
Great Hare must have heard our prayer. 
Joe Corbiere came up and greeted me. Joe 
and I have fished and hunted and bunked 
together for a long time now. And Joe 
can cook. I tried to shanghai Joe right 
there. But it would n't do. Joe was going 
up the Shore with another party. But 
Joe would get me a cook,— yes "I guess 
so mebbe"— perhaps— sure, at Batchewana 
Bay— yes, even though he had to beat him 
into insensibiHty with a tent-peg. Joe ac- 
cepted the bounty and I knew we 'd have a 
cook for breakfast, albeit a battered and 
bruised cook. But a cook is a cook. 

We were due to reach Batchewana Bay— 
a fishing-station and half-hearted Indian 
[151] 



A Beatific Error 



settlement — at four a.m. I told the ship's 
watchman — for another bonus — to call Joe 
and me at 3.45 a.m. Joe met me at the 
gang-plank. Dawn was just breaking. We 
tiptoed off into the cook-country, going 
quietly not to flush them. We came to a 
shanty in the poplars and half-light. Joe 
threw open the door, stalked up to a sleeper, 
and said something in Indian that sounded 
like a foot-ball signal. The sleeper, an 
Indian, grunted, got up, grabbed for his 
trousers and hat, and said "all right," pre- 
cisely as if this being yanked out of bed at 
four A.M. to go to the Arctic circle with a 
pack of strange, pale-faced lunatics were a 
lifelong custom. 

And it was old Tommie Nish-i-shin-i-wog. 
I did n't know that Tommie could cook, 
but it was Joe's party and responsibility — 
not mine. 

When we got back to the Caribou I made 
Joe a proposition to come to the big city 
and open an intelligence office based upon 
[152] 



De Gustibus — Alas! 



just those business methods. In ten minutes 
he had convinced me that there 's only one 
way to get a "perfect jewel" for the kitchen. 
The Caribou was an hour out of Michipo- 
coten Harbor — we should arrive there at 
3 P.M. — when four men, each in a stateroom 
slightly more spacious than a canary-cage, 
began redistributing his belongings and re- 
making his packs. It was uncommonly 
complicated business. First, we were going 
up the river— and would start that night. 
We must travel light. After the river trip 
we were going into permanent camp and 
live luxuriously on the Lake Superior shore 
and get the reef-fishing. That meant one 
pack to go and one pack to stay in the Michi- 
pocoten warehouse. Worse than that, it 
meant the ripping open on the boat or dock 
of every box of bacon, coffee, flour, every re- 
ceptacle in that mound of supplies. We all 
wrangled over it for an hour, every man 
fighting for the item of diet dearest to his 
stomach. When a majority sentiment de- 
I153] 



A Beatific Error 



creed that the stimulants should be reduced 
to a full flask per man on that river trip His 
Lordship broke down completely and the 
spectacle of his unrestrained grief unnerved 
us. 

But George Andre was there — on the pier 
at Michipocoten Harbor waiting for us. 
He was the head guide we had engaged by 
correspondence. I liked George Andre the 
minute I grabbed his great, brown, sinewy 
paw. He was a full-blooded Chippewa, six 
feet high, lean and rangey. He looked you 
squarely in the eye when he talked. The 
first thing he did was to try the weight of 
one of the canoes. That seemed logical. 
Then he fell-to, opening boxes and separating 
the wheat from the chaff. He had his two 
sub-guides there, too. He presented them 
as Peter Kash and William Teddy. Pete 
was just a good-natured, fat Indian-cub, 
who laughed and ate much more easily 
and instinctively than he worked. If Wil- 
liam Teddy were a younger man — he is a 
[154] 



Providential Coleman 



well preserved fifty perhaps — I should guess 
his name to be a subtle compliment both 
to the President of the United States and 
our Most PubHc Private Citizen. Life is all 
an uproarious incident to William Teddy, 
too. 

The mouth of the Michipocoten River is 
three miles from the harbor dock — three 
miles across Michipocoten Bay. The work 
of picking seven-day essentials out of the 
commissary department was progressing very 
slowly. The afternoon was waning. We 
had to get a start up the river that day; 
or to make camp, at least. 

Providence sent us Mr. Coleman and his 
gasoline launch. We fell upon him and 
chartered him for an indefinite period on the 
spot. We divided the party. Jim and His 
Lordship stayed on the wharf to finish the 
work of inventory and elimination. Fred 
and I loaded up the Rambler with duffel, 
tents, and supplies already accepted and the 
Rambler settled down in the Superior waters 
[155] 



A Beatific Error 



to her guards. We took George Andre, 
Pete, William Teddy, and Tommie, and, with 
the four canoes leaping and capsizing in tow 
astern, we cut across the bay for the river- 
mouth to find a camp-site. We promised 
to send back for Jim and His Lordship when 
the deep, dark hold of the Caribou should 
give up the rest of our "grub." 

There is a Hudson Bay post there, where 
the mighty Michipocoten swings around the 
thousandth bend and slips at last into 
Superior. That is, the buildings are there — 
low, rambling, picturesque old structures 
of logs, with great beams cut by hand a 
century ago and little diamond window panes. 
There is the old house of "The Factor" and 
smaller houses where the coureurs des hois 
and trappers and defenders of the H. B. C. 
once made the northern midnight howl 
with epic-songs and journey-end celebrations. 
But these buildings are deserted now. The 
Hudson Bay Company has moved its post 
up to Missanabie. We camped in the front 
[156] 



Belated Discoveries 



yard of the silent post with the ghosts of 
other days. 

We had put up the tents — the A-tents — 
and got out the blankets. George had filled 
the water-pail from a spring and Tommie had 
the pot on the fire and the potatoes peeled 
and the coffee and bacon ready. In the 
lull, waiting for Jim and His Lordship, I 
thought it wise to run over the map and the 
campaign and route with George Andre. 

Right there I made a discovery that jolted 
me as I hadn't been jolted for years. In 
my ignorance I had planned to start out at 
sunrise to-morrow with the flotilla and pad- 
dle briskly and light-heartedly right up the 
Michipocoten River. George put a gnarled 
finger on a spot of the map about fifteen 
miles from the rock where we were sitting 
and said firmly : 

"Take a week to get there." 

"Why?" I asked with sinking heart. 

"Water swift, all rapids," said George. 
"Have to pole and line all the way." 
[i57l 



A Beatific Error 



"But we must get up there," I insisted, 
pointing to Lake Manitowick, a good sixty- 
miles by the river, "and do it in a week, 
too." 

"All right," said George. "We go over 
these lakes here, make portage, and do it in 
two days. " 

"How about the portage?" I asked fear- 
fully. 

"Seven-mile one to start with, to Lake 
Wa-Wa," said George. 

"Do you think we are carrying a moving- 
van in the outfit?" I gasped. 

"Mebbe I get a team — at the Mission," 
said George. 

"One team to tote foiir canoes and this 
colossal scenic production?" 

"Sure," said George. "Get wagon with 
rack." 

"Take a canoe and get the team and the 
teamster," I said. 

George did it. He paddled over to the 
Indian Mission and back and reported that 
[158] 



By Water? or Moving- Van? 

the team would be waiting for us with the 
morning's sun. 

We had a surprise for Jim and His Lordship 
when they puffed into camp with another 
launch-load of "eats." But they didn't 
grumble or call me any of the things I de- 
served and fully expected to be called. 
The optimism and charity — and appetite — 
of the wilderness had already melted the 
iron in their hearts. In gratitude I opened 
some ox-tail soup and two cans of pork and 
beans. Right there Tommie's culinary gen- 
ius, hidden these decades beneath a half- 
bushel, began declaring itself. We sang 
and perpetrated bad puns and capered as we 
spread our blankets over balsam boughs 
that William Teddy had cut, and sweet 
marsh-hay filched from the H. B. C.'s de- 
serted barn. We rolled into those blankets, 
too, at the time when we should be just 
about finishing a huge, indigestible dinner 
back in the big city. The camp was very 
still in the stillness of the northern night, 
[159] 



A Beatific Error 



when I took a last look at the bright northern 
stars and hearkened to the surf of Superior 
and the snores of James. I opened the flap 
of His Lordship's tent cautiously. He had 
his moustaches in curl papers and was 
manicuring his nails by the light of an electric 
lantern. I was n't sure how His Lordship 
was going to enjoy and last out this trip. He 
waved his hand at me gayly and said: 

"My dear old chap, this is perfectly 
ripping — I say — is n't it?" 

Which it certainly was. Then the pack 
of half- wolf Indian dogs at the Mission began 
howling and I dreamed that I had my eager 
fingers around the neck of that "no-trout- 
in- the- Michipocoten "-spectre and was chok- 
ing it to death with the full delight of a 
pleasure long deferred. 



I160I 



CHAPTER VIII 

we encounter 
"his lordship" portages the potatoes 

THE surf of Superior, a mile away, was 
softly grumbling and the falls of the 
Magpie River, just around the bend, could 
be heard roaring, so still was the wilderness 
morning, when the east glowed from coral 
to crimson and we emerged from those 
A-tents to begin the day of days. The valley, 
wherein we and the old Hudson Bay post had 
been sleeping, and the broad waters of the 
Michipocoten, with its sand-bar capriciously 
thrown up at the post-gates, were still in 
deep shadow. 

While Tommie urged along the breakfast, 

in its essentials virtually an echo and encore 

of last night's dinner, we struck the tents, 

did up packs, and made another substantial 

IX [i6i] 



"Profanity Portage" 



cut in the unportable commissary. About 
two hundred pounds of tinned stuff was left 
with the hospitable family of Launchman 
Coleman. 

All that which had been 0. K. 'ed by four 
men as bed-rock and absolutely indispensable 
was committed to one pile and I viewed that 
pile with growing apprehension. His Lord- 
ship's collection of toilet articles — it would 
have made a tidy little nucleus for any enter- 
prising druggist — we had to steal from His 
Lordship's elaborate duffel-bags or fairly 
tear from his clinging fingers. It was an hour 
of heroic sacrifices and recriminations. At 
the very last moment William Teddy tabooed 
the tent-poles and on each of the twenty- 
odd subsequent portages we thanked W. T. 
for that. I looked at the four canoes hauled 
out on the gravel beach and that soaring 
pile of duffel and feared greatly. George 
did it. He stowed it all away somehow. 
We climbed over the assorted cargoes into 
the canoes gingerly. Jim and Pete were 
[162] 



Four Canoes — and Dawn 

the first to swing out into the stream; then 
His Lordship and Billy T.; then Fred and 
Tommie. George and I took a last look 
around, for an abandoned camp-site gen- 
erally yields a wealth of things forgotten. At 
last four canoes struggled around the sand- 
bar and slipped across the current toward 
the Mission just as the sun broke through 
the mountain wall to the east and streamed 
down a ravine upon us. Nan-i-bou-jou was 
bestowing godly smiles upon the expedition 
at its outset. I heard His Lordship com- 
plimenting the scenery to William Teddy 
who indulgently grunted. 

With oiir landing came the first taste of 
the wealth of portaging to come. It was not 
more than twenty feet high, perhaps, that 
bank, but it rose sheer from the beach and, 
while we elevated the whole outfit, canoes 
and all, up that height, some thirty Indian 
dogs fought delightedly for the privilege of 
sniffing our commissary department most 
critically. Then the first forgotten essential 
[163] 



" Profanity Portage '* 



was remembered — pack-straps — now repos- 
ing languidly in Jim's extra duffel-bag in the 
warehouse. We had to rout out the keeper 
of the lone general-store for the pack-straps. 
William Teddy took advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to buy for himself a bottle of "pain- 
killer." The Canadian government slaps 
into jail the merchant who sells whiskey to 
an Indian. So the merchant sells the In- 
dian "pain-killer," which, taken in sufficient 
quantities, kills pain and dull care and con- 
sciousness as if assaulting them with a lead 
pipe. It is the vilest mess that cunning and 
avarice can possibly concoct. But it suited 
William Teddy. 

We lashed the four canoes to the wagon- 
rack. Indeed, we did better than that. 
We managed to strap most of the outfit to 
that wagon. Some things of admitted deco- 
rative value, such as frying-pans and broilers 
and coffee-pots and a pair of His Lordship's 
pajamas that fell out of the pack, we tied 
around the horses' necks. They were a 
[164] 



Wa-Wa— Seven Miles! 



marvel of condensed and economical loading 
— that team and wagon — when we were ready 
to start. 

"Wa-Wa— next stop," shouted Fred glee- 
fully, as he poked His Lordship smartly in 
the ribs. The driver, high up on the prow 
of the topmost canoe, cracked a villainous- 
looking black-snake and we were off — to 
the headwaters of the Michipocoten, be- 
ginning with a very husky seven-mile hike. 

The first four miles was up-hill. The trail 
that we followed, with William Teddy lead- 
ing, corkscrewed about and grand-right-and- 
lefted with the tote-road. We re-united 
with the team every once in a while to 
tighten up the canoe-lashings and count 
the bags and rods and kettles that had been 
shaken out and sprinkled along the trail. 

When about four miles out on that road, 
I stopped Jim to make him a promise. I 
promised Jim, that the first thing I should do, 
when I got back to the Big City, would be 
to kill a certain manufactiurer of "hunting 
[165I 



=* Profanity Portage'' 



boots." Did you ever have the nails of a 
new pair of boots work through the soles — 
lots of nails in each sole — of your boots, when 
you were in the exact mathematical centre 
of a seven-mile trail? That is one of the 
chiefest charms and advantages of brand- 
new boots. For a while you try to make 
yourself believe you 're mistaken and there 're 
no nails transfixing your quivering soles at 
all. Then you try walking on your heels 
and then toes and then sides of your feet. 
You sit down and take off your boots while 
the black-flies come for miles around to coast 
down your nose and hold Marathon races 
on your glasses, and you take off those 
damnable boots and sympathize with your 
feet. That is a stupid thing to do, because 
the boots have to go on again and you prob- 
ably don't put the nails back in the same 
holes they 've made in your feet. So the nails 
make new holes for themselves, until you 
know that your each sole looks like the top 
of a pepper-box. I ripped chunks out of the 
[i66] 



"The Deserted Village'' 

tail of my flannel shirt and made insoles. 
My boots were fairly squdgey with blood at 
the end of that trail. His Lordship prom- 
ised to go with me to the maker of "hunting 
boots" and give him "both barrels," in case 
I missed him. 

Then we came to Lake Wa-Wa. It opened 
out suddenly at our very feet, as those im- 
pulsive northern lakes generally do. But 
the sight of houses, a whole town, surprised 
us more; — hotel, "The Balmoral"; general- 
store, post-office, blacksmith shop, all the 
urban appurtenances are there on the shores 
of Lake Wa-Wa. And they 're all deserted. 
Faded signboards and shutters are flapping 
in the wind. It is a ghastly, forlorn place — 
is Wa-Wa — when the wind whistles through 
the broken window-panes and telegraph 
wires. That was another of Mr. Clergue's 
splendid dreams. He built Wa-Wa in one 
sitting and peopled it and started it out 
thriving and hopeful. Having built the 
town and peopled it, Mr. Clergue said: 
[167] 



" Profanity Portage 



"Let 's see if we can't find a gold mine or 
something around here to employ and support 
the town." But he didn't find it and the 
Wa-Wa proletariat gave the keys back to 
Mr. Clergue and left "our beautiful city" 
to the wolves and bob-cats. I borrowed a 
machine hammer and a chisel from the phan- 
tom smithy and made over the sub-water- 
line of those boots to meet the needs of 
comfort. 

We had to paddle Lake Wa-Wa from end 
to end, five miles of towering, heavily wooded 
shores. A thunder-shower came up and 
bathed us gently. Then the wind stirred 
up a sea, but wind and sea were directly 
astern and the four canoes were bowled 
along on the crest of the young day's en- 
thusiasm. With George in the stern of my 
canoe, my responsibilities oppressed me not 
at all. He is, without exception, the best 
man in a canoe I ever saw. And that is not 
remarkable. George carries the mail be- 
tween Michipocoten Harbor and Missanabie 
[168] 



Andre Canoeman 



on the Canadian Pacific. They are fifty- 
miles apart and George, carrying a hundred- 
and-fifty-pound pack, runs the trails, [finds 
and leaves a canoe on each of the half- 
dozen lakes, and makes the round trip twice 
every eight days. Why should n't George 
know the country and handle a canoe most 
masterfully? 

Once during the gorgeous paddle to the head 
of Wa-Wa I heard a wolf howl contempla- 
tively back among the ridges. Three flocks 
of duck — all teal, I believe — flew over us 
and surveyed us with frank and fearless 
curiosity. 

The sun was in the zenith when the portage 
loomed ahead. George and I went into 
executive session. We decided to lunch and, 
while lunching, to send the Indians ahead with 
the canoes over the half-mile portage to the 
first little lake. Right there we had to do 
some emergency boat-repairing. The builder 
of those canoes had looked no farther than 
the polite pastimes of the park-lagoons. 
[169] 



** Profanity Portage" 



There was no thwart amidships upon which 
to make a sHng for the head of the Indian 
carrying the canoe. In ten minutes George 
and William Teddy had converted those four 
canoes into the bush-going craft they should 
be, while Jim and Fred and I stood by and 
gave minute instructions which were uni_ 
formly and properly disregarded. That was 
a boisterous and silly lunch. I look back now 
upon the blatant confidence and premature 
optimism of that hour with profoundest pity 
for the four of us. We all told one another: 

"Say — this trip isn't so tough after all. 
Just enough walking and portaging to keep 
us in shape." 

And all that sort of tenderfootish rot. 
And George heard it and grinned saturninely. 

Then we started. The dinkey little half- 
mile portage just served to strengthen the 
illusion. We brought up on the shore of an 
absurd little lake, like a park-pond, and 
paddled across it, with our after-lunch pipes 
still fuming. 

[170] 



Elation Premature 



George said that the next portage was 
"quite leetle walk — yes — mebbe two mile and 
a half — sure — 'bout dat." 

We hit the tote-road again. His Lordship 
felt ambitious then. His lunch had nourished 
him and his heart was singing. He wanted 
to show us — particularly George Andre — 
that a blooming aborigine had n't anything 
to show him. He picked out the sack of 
potatoes for that portage. Potatoes in bulk 
stimulate neither the memory nor the imag- 
ination. There is no poetry, no inspiration, no 
reserve intellectual force, no response to kind- 
ness or devotion — nothing but coarse, back- 
breaking, soul-revolting weight in a sack of po- 
tatoes. We wondered at His Lordship's taste 
when he selected the potatoes and left the cam- 
eras and rod-cases. But away he went blithely 
out on that two-and-a-half-mile portage. 
Fred took a pack that quite eclipsed Fred's 
physical self — and he went through with it, 
too. George, Billy T., Tommie, and Pete had 
toted the canoes two miles, where the trail 
[171I 



"Profanity Portage" 



breaks off from the tote-road, dropped them, 
and come back for another load. Somebody 
had to wait and see that nothing was left 
on the portage. The best Indian is distrait 
when he 's packing. So I was the last to 
leave the landing-place. I won't say what 
I carried. The first mile I was ashamed of it 
and glad I was last. Then I began thinking 
of the others' selfishness and thoughtlessness 
in giving me all the heavy work; until, at a 
mile and a half, I was just about the shining- 
est, groggiest little martyr that ever wan- 
dered the woodland without a harp or a halo. 
But then I overtook His Lordship. He 
was sitting on his sack of potatoes with his 
face buried in his hands. I spoke lightly, 
cheerily, and he gasped something through 
his fingers. I blundered then. I offered to 
carry that sack of potatoes — rather to try 
to carry that sack of potatoes — for a while. 
What I received was precisely what I de- 
served. His Lordship arose, flung the po- 
tatoes upon his poor, tousled, steaming head, 
[172] 



Packs and Viewpoints 



and staggered off with them, without another 
word. I had blurted out my suspicion that 
His Lordship was a tenderfoot, a not even 
particularly "game" tenderfoot. Then and 
there I began making-over my estimate of 
His Lordship — because throughout that trip, 
whenever there was a man's work or two 
men's work to be done, His Lordship was 
camping right on the job — every minute. 
It simply goes to show that an expensive 
camping-toilet and waxed moustaches can 
and do disguise the kind of stuff of which 
wilderness-friendships and enduring admira- 
tion are made. 

We finished that long portage in two relays. 
Then a paddle of a few hundred yards across 
a silent, marshy little lake. Then a portage 
of another few hundred yards and another 
lake. 

We were, as usual, wholly unprepared for 
the horrors of "Profanity Portage." George 
had said it was — "Guess-mebbe 'bout a mile 
— sure — leetle more or less." 
[173] 



"Profanity Portage'' 



At first the trail was open and aboveboard 
and promised to be good. When it had led 
us into the densest sort of undergrowth 
and tamarack-swamps, that trail, laughing 
derisively, disappeared into the ground and 
left us scattering ourselves to the four winds 
on moose-trails and caribou-trails. The 
Indians had taken the canoes over and 
George came back and rounded us up and 
shooed us along before him. The last half- 
mile might have been the descent to Dante's 
Inferno. It was down a long hill. The 
bushes were up to one's ears and the ground 
was paved with irregular shaped rocks about 
twice the size of one's head. With a hundred- 
pound pack upon one's back, one's time was 
fairly evenly divided between falling down and 
getting up again. When we re-united, steam- 
ing and cursing, on the shores of another lake, 
we gathered around George and demanded 
more candor and precision, henceforth, in 
his diagnoses. 

Then came "Beauty Lake." We named 
[174I 





' Then Came ' Beautv Lake ' ! ' 




'Something in the Way of Wild Waterways Worth 
While. " 



Then Compensations 



it — and named it "Beauty Lake," because 
*' Magnificent Lake" or "Exquisite Lake" 
seemed hyperbole for the wilderness. It 
must have been put there for a purpose — 
probably to repay the man who had exhausted 
his body and his vocabulary stumbling over 
"Profanity Portage." It looked "trouty," 
too. But we had to make camp somewhere 
and it was six o'clock and the dark clouds 
piling up in the west looked threatening. 

We portaged again — maybe twenty rods, — 
crossed an unclean pond of muck and slimy 
reeds, lugged everything up a steep hill — 
and pondered. There was Hawk Lake, 
three miles long, at our feet, and a very 
nasty looking thunder-storm at our backs. 
Then came grumblings over in the hills. 
It is not nice to have wet blankets one's first 
night on a trip of fast travelling, like this. 

Should we make camp on this hill — an 

tmpromising site — and beat out the storm — 

or take a chance and make a run for it — 

for a more level and agreeable camping 

[175] 



"Profanity Portage'* 



place? George put it up to me. I put it 
up to the North Shore Club. It seemed so 
much sportier to take the chance of the 
ducking, that no one hesitated. His Lord- 
ship — good sport — was quite jubilant over 
the gambling element in the situation. 

As we swung out into Hawk Lake George 
bade me look over the side of the canoe and 
watch the bottom. When we came to the 
spot, I saw the water bubbling and there, 
far down in the lake's floor, I saw a gaping 
hole, perhaps a yard across, out of which a 
great spring was gushing. There is, un- 
doubtedly, a colony of trout around that 
spring. But the storm was giving us a pretty 
race. 

For awhile, the four canoes raced abreast, 
eight men putting their backs into every stroke 
of the paddles. Then George's flawless 
form — not mine — began to tell and we pulled 
away from the field inch by inch. Had there 
been anybody within twenty miles that 
evening, he would have seen all the Hawk 
[176] 



The Roar of the Storm 

Lake canoe-records go bump. We had only 
the roar of the approaching storm to keep 
us pegging at it, but it served. We would 
reach each successive camping-spot that 
George had prophesied, only to find it too 
rocky or too bushy or too exposed or too 
sandy — and push on. Jim, in the last canoe 
with phlegmatic Pete, — thunder-storms are as 
nothing to native indolence such as Pete's, — 
began urging a speedy landing, then order- 
ing it, then praying for it — then screaming 
wildly for it. 

William Teddy took the situation in hand 
at this dramatic juncture. He had trapped 
bears up there the winter before. He shouted 
to George in flawless Chippewa and pointed — ■ 
but he pointed to the extreme end of Hawk 
Lake, a mile and a half away. We turned 
and streaked for it — leaving wrathful James 
shouting in our wake. 

Billy T.'s inspiration was worth it. Back 
ten yards from the broad sand beach we 
found a grove of birches, with the ground 

12 [177] 



" Profanity Portage 



carpeted with moss and plenty of room for 
three tents and the dining-fly. The briskness 
and precision with which George and Billy 
T. and Pete slapped up those tents was pretty 
to see — ^if we had had time to see it — which 
we had n't. Nan-i-bou-jou just turned that 
storm cloud inside-out directly over that 
grove of birches. We grabbed the canoes, 
turned them bottom-up, and thrust the bed- 
ding and perishable supplies, such as the 
flour and sugar, beneath them. In two 
minutes the setting sun and brilliant blue 
northern sky popped out again. 

While things were sizzling over Tommie's 
fire and George and Billy T. were cutting 
balsam and filling lanterns, Jim and Fred, 
indefatigable fishermen, sallied forth upon 
the bosom of Hawk Lake with canoe and 
steel rod and troUing spoon to see what they 
should see. Fred had n't paddled ten yards 
from the beach, Jim casting, when first a 
muttered exclamation and then pandemonium 
broke loose. The lake was alive — not with 
[178] 



Pre-Prandial Incident 



trout as we hoped, for it looked likely — but 
with big, green, hungry, villainous grass-pike. 
They could have filled the canoes — so de- 
lighted were those pike with the glittering 
novelty in the spinner — ^if Tommie's voice, 
back in the bushes, had n*t heralded dinner. 

I have been body- and soul- wearied on the 
trail, several times. But never did every 
bone and muscle and nerve cry aloud in 
agony as they did that night on Hawk Lake, 
when we had finished our pipes on the beach 
and I tried to get up to fall into my blankets. 
We had done twenty-five miles since sun- 
rise and a good fifteen of it had been portaging 
with back-breaking packs. I craved another 
of George's prophecies. I could n't move, 
so I called him and he came out of the bushes, 
without a sound, and stood in the light of 
the fire. 

"This is all right, George," I said, "as 
pretty a little cross-country sprint as ever 
broke the great heart of a college athlete. 
But when do we get trout?" 
I179] 



" Profanity Portage '* 



George looked each one of us squarely 
in the eye and said frankly: 

"If we go fast like we did to-day, t'ree 
o'clock to-morrow afternoon — I show you trout 
— big ones — sure — mebbe two, t'ree pound." 

"No metaphors now about this, George?" 
Fred interpolated. 

"Sure — all trout," George insisted stoutly. 

"If I could move two inches," I said, 
"I should certainly do something modest 
and timely as befits the occasion." 

"My dear old chap," cried His Lordship, 
springing to his feet as agile as a freshman 
hurdler, "permit me. I can put my hand 
right on it." 

And he did. He put his hand right on the 
biggest quart flask I ever saw — and a quart 
can be made to look insignificant, too, at the 
end of a portage. 

His Lordship — bless his stout, generous, 
capacious heart — handed the flask first to 
George, who looked at it critically, then 
raised it smilingly: 

[180I 




d 


(U 


o 


> 






,^i 


s 






3 

w 


1 


o 


►Jl 






!i: 




o 




^ 




cu 




r^ 




m 




d 




Ph 





Felicitations 



"To the trout"— then diffidently— " and 
de best coureurs des bois for genteelmen— 
what I ever see— yet— sure, mebbe— what 
I ever see. " 

It was all very theatric and delightful. 
But we had sleep to get and the Great 
Mystery of the Michipocoten to solve with 
the morrow's sun— just there over the eastern 
ridges. 



[i8il 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PERILS OF RUNNING WHITE WATER FIND 
WILLIAM teddy's TONGUE 

WE might have been camping on Hawk 
Lake or Mt. McKinley or at Dr. 
Cook's debatable Etah, for all I knew or 
cared, when Fred awakened me that morning 
— awakened me by dribbling the contents of 
a pail of drinking water down into my inno- 
cent young face. Then I tried to make 
good my promise to wring his neck. Inas- 
much as Fred used to be a college-wrestler 
and half-back and had never really outgrown 
it, I found my efforts to be diverting, but 
up-hill work. We effected an armistice and 
conceived it to be the neighborly thing to 
take what was left in the water pail and go 
and awaken Jim and His Lordship. We 
tiptoed across the dewy glade and peered 
[182J 




These Rocks Are Nan-i-bou-jou and Family 




Of Course, we Lunched here at the Lower End of 
the Rapids. 



Call to Breakfast 



cautiously into — an empty tent. In a few 
minutes we heard shouts from the lake. They 
were mixing it up with those imsophisticated 
Hawk-Lake pickerel again. 

Tommie's call to breakfast — back there in 
the green gloom of the birches — reminded 
Fred that he wanted to shave. That was 
a curious phenomenon provocative of much 
discussion, how a summons to eat always 
recalled to Fred the things he had intended 
to do before eating. He would sit around 
for an hour or so before mealtime, languid 
and care-free — then, when Tommie shouted 
*' breakfast" or "dinner," Fred would spring 
up full of action and determination and rush 
off to take a bath or clean his gun or write 
a few home letters. For Fred there must 
have been some hidden meaning, singularly 
potent and suggestive, in Tommie's mono- 
syllabic call to "grub." 

When we had piled the outfit on the beach 
to load the four canoes, our position on the 
map was made clear to us graphically, yes, 
[183] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

even geographically. There was McVeigh's 
Creek rumbling into Hawk Lake scarcely 
a hundred yards away. 

It is a curious thing that, no matter what 
allurements the trail may hold out just 
ahead, the real woodsman never leaves a 
snug camp without a pang of regret. And 
barring Tommie's fried pickerel which at 
breakfast we had valiantly and unsuccess- 
fully assaulted. Hawk Lake camp was a very 
rollicking sort of a memory. 

The gorgeous day was still an infant when 
the canoe-keels grated on the beach and we 
pushed off, George and I leading, to hunt out 
the mouth of Hawk Lake River. It did n't 
demand much hunting. We slid into it 
smoothly. Then followed some six hours of 
enchantment. Hawk Lake River is an ex- 
quisite little toy-stream, sometimes scarcely 
wide enough to permit two canoes to go 
abreast. Again, it widens out into a silent 
lake, four or five hundred yards across. 
Sometimes the canoe slips silently over deep, 
[184] 



Exquisite Toy-Stream 



dark channels. Sometimes the stream shal- 
lows up abruptly and goes giggling over 
pebbles scarcely awash. We were in the 
water much of the time, lifting the canoes 
over baby-rapids. For miles you glide along 
over moss and sunken logs in the deep shade 
of a leafy canopy that arches the river from 
shore to shore and shuts out the blue sky and 
morning sun from this green-flecked ca- 
thedral in which God and nature as God 
made it are being worshipped throughout 
those stupendous, silent processes of the 
wilderness. Sometimes a school of fish, 
darting out from some submarine jungle, 
gave us a sensation. But they were lowly 
and abhorred suckers, not trout. First, we 
portaged around a log- jam; then, around a 
furious stretch of the river where there were 
more rocks than water and portaging was 
easier on the trail than in the bed of the 
stream. Once, at the foot of some quite 
sizable rapids, which we ran in the canoes 
and would have fished, if we had had time, 
[185] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

we came upon a canoe and a parcel hanging 
from a tree. The canoe, of course, belonged 
to George's substitute on the mail-route, but 
the mystery of the parcel will always remain 
unsolved. 

Four portages in all we made before noon, 
the longest about a mile and a half. On this 
trail, trudging along in the rear-guard to see 
that every pack had at least started over 
the portage, I came upon a most attractive 
and unusual exhibit for the wilderness. 
First I found three clean handkerchiefs of 
fine texture and great price. The brand 
of sachet lingering lovingly in their linen 
depths would have marked them as His 
Lordship's, even if the embroidered initials 
had not. That was a good starter, but even 
that left me unprepared for the lavish, almost 
indelicate display of intimate articles to come. 
After I had picked up toothbrush, paja- 
mas, pound of pipe tobacco, case of calling 
cards, and a beautiful pair of bedroom sHp- 
pers, the real substance and big features of the 
[186] 




A Setting Becoming to Most Any Canoe. 




To Make Camp or to Push on — Time 6.30 p.m. 



Wilderness Exhibits 



wardrobe began to show on the wabu-bushes 
and caribou-moss. I speedily added a pair 
of trousers, one boot, a flannel shirt, and a 
sweater to my collection. When I issued 
forth from the portage and joined the expe- 
dition, Fred said, "Hello — what the devil 
is this — the 'old-clothes man'? " The carry- 
ing of his duffel-bag wrong-end-up cost His 
Lordship a box of two hundred cigarettes — 
we never did find those. 

The river quite suddenly decided to do 
something in the way of wild waterways 
worth while and spread itself out into a dainty 
lake. The map calls it Miller Lake, and who- 
ever Mr. Miller is, his judgment in lakes is 
most admirable. 

At the head of that lake we lunched. 
While Tommie fed us, George with Billy T. 
and Pete carried the canoes over the half- 
mile portage to Blue Lake; Jim, His Lordship, 
and Fred played a most boisterous rubber 
of "auction-bridge," and I brought the neg- 
lected Log substantially up to date. 
. [187] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

That portage itself was an experience 
unique. It led through a grove of giant 
cedars, jack-pines, Norways, and birches. 
Every tree was a Titan and the country was 
curiously open and consequently beautiful. 
It reminded me of the north country as the 
designers of magazine-covers always think 
it is. 

Down we plunked upon our temperamental 
little friend. Hawk Lake River, again. Then 
we came upon a shallow alcove-like pond, full 
of pike, sunning themselves in the shallow 
water, covered with lily-pads. 

There were, literally, hundreds of pike. 
Jim was with great difficulty restrained from 
unlimbering his rod and spinner. Fred 
shot several with his little pocket power-rifle. 

To be frank, I did n't at all suspect we were 
in Lake Manitowick, until a wave came over 
the bow of the canoe and cuddled cutely in 
my unreceptive lap. We turned a point, 
while I was pondering this chilling phenome- 
non, and the "big water" opened out before 
[i88] 



"Big Water" and Cold 

us. His Lordship turned admiringly to 
William Teddy, who up to this time had 
declared his complete ignorance of English, 
and said: 

"I say, old chap, now this is perfectly 
ripping — isn't it?" 

Failing entirely to catch the really con- 
tagious spontaneity of that burst of en- 
thusiasm, William Teddy grunted — and Fred 
and Jim and I just incontinently guffawed. 

There were quite a wind and a choppy 
sea on Lake Manitowick. That was where 
my lap-chilling roller had come from. 

It was fortunate for us that our course 
took us around a bend and out of the trough 
of the sea. Lake Manitowick is eight miles 
long and the foam-crested rollers that were 
sweeping down that eight-mile stretch made 
no place for a canoe. Jim and Peter made 
the mistake of trying to hurry the escape 
with full steam ahead and their canoe had 
shipped a good deal of water before we shouted 
to them to "head up into it" and take it 
I189] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

easier. We saw two ospreys circling about 
in the zenith when the shores of the lake 
began tapering together, preparatory to that 
mystic change into a river-mouth. There 
was the ospreys' nest in a giant jack-pine 
when I focused the camera upon it, but, 
somehow, the nest was effaced from the 
pine when the film was developed. 

"There's the river!" shouted George. 
Having implicit confidence in George, I 
shouted "There's the river" to the other 
three canoes, but, personally, I saw nothing 
in the sand beach ahead, apparently un- 
broken for miles, to warrant this enthusiasm. 
Then the sand beach began swinging open 
like a gate and, as we moved to the left, wider 
grew the opening and the mouth of the Michi- 
pocoten River. Inasmuch as we had come 
about eight hundred miles for that moment 
it meant something. Its width is singularly 
uniform — between two and three hundred 
yards, perhaps. Of course, the country is 
rough and broken, though the banks of the 
[190] 




t 



Achievements and Invidious Comparisons. 



Mutual Surprises 



river are generally low and heavily wooded, 
down to the very water's edge. We were 
going quietly. The four canoes were strung 
out in single file and we were all too busy 
with our own thoughts to fling conversation 
across the waters. That made possible 
that which happened. George and I were 
close to the bank. I think George had a 
reason in this. We turned a long narrow 
point, beyond which an alcove from the 
river ran inland and made a little lagoon. 

** Don't move too quick," said George in 
a whisper, "but look up there by dat big 
stump." 

A bull moose had lifted his great head from 
the water. He had heard or scented some- 
thing, but mistaken the direction. Every 
muscle and nerve in that huge body bespoke 
suspicion, very close to terror. He stood 
perfectly immovable, listening, sniffing, for, 
maybe, fifteen seconds. Slowly, the breeze 
that had carried the warning grew more 
candid with that monarch of the wild places. 
[191] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

Slowly he turned his great head in our direc- 
tion, and surveyed us calmly, majestically. 
Then, with a snort, more of contempt than 
fear, he whirled about and disappeared in 
the thicket without a sound. The incident 
could have been no more graphic, yet unreal, 
had I been sitting in a vaudeville theatre 
and seen it upon a moving-picture screen. 

His Lordship's canoe came up then and 
William Teddy and George cut loose a terrific 
broadside of Chippewa conversation. That 
annoyed Fred. He said it was cowardly 
to gossip like that behind the back of a 
decent, law-abiding bull moose and asked 
George if he knew what might happen if 
a scandal like that ever got around among the 
other "meese" of that congressional district. 

About that time I looked at my watch. I 
had a purpose in it. George had promised 
the meeting-up with trout for three o'clock. 
It was then 2.30 and I hadn't noticed any 
very conspicuous trout-emporia in the vicinity. 
Jim remembered it, too. 
[192] 



The Trout-Tryst 



"How about that three o'clock date of 
ours, George?" Jim asked. 

George grinned. " We get there all right, " 
he said. 

We heard the rapids before we saw them. 
Indeed, we were n't a hundred yards from 
Pigeon Falls when the announcement came. 
There is a fall of eighteen feet there in a 
half-mile. The whole Michipocoten River 
squeezes itself into a mad jumble of waters 
and rocks scarcely fifty feet wide and goes 
roaring down the slide, until the hills fling 
back echoes of the turmoil. We went ashore, 
just where the waters begin to wrinkle up 
and look oily in the first clutch of the mael- 
strom. 

"Here dem trout," said George, stepping 
out of the canoe and waving his hand airily 
with a grin toward the roaring rapids. I 
looked at my watch. It lacked five minutes 
of three o'clock. 

"Hand me that rod-case, Tommie," said 
Jim. Then began a lively scramble, putting 
13 [ 193] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

up rods, going down to the bottom of duffel- 
bags for reels and leader-boxes and fly-books. 
As the race grew hotter and the fever raged 
more fiercely in our veins, bags were in- 
continently dumped out on the rocks, until 
that portage looked like a rummage-sale. 
Jim and His Lordship were already casting. 
Fred was about to plunge into the torrent to 
get nearer a likely looking swirl. I was debat- 
ing whether to use a Montreal or a Parmache- 
nee Belle for the tail-fly, when I beheld George 
engaged in some very significant manoeuvres. 
I ceased my trout-preparations and watched 
George. First, he stood up on a rock and 
intently scrutinized that expanse of furious 
water. Then he came back and examined 
the canoe and the paddles. Then he talked 
vivaciously with William Teddy and Pete. 
William T., it must be remembered, could n't 
speak English. Something in George's eye, 
too, was dancing. 

"What are you going to do, George?" 
I inquired languidly. 

[194] 




a 
Q 



An Idea is Born 



" We portage the t'ings 'round rapeed here, ' ' 
he said. 

"Yes, I know," I said, "but what are you 
going to do with the canoes?" 

George grinned sheepishly. *'Well, I 
guess — mebbe — I try run rapeed," he said. 

"All right," I said, dropping my rod. 
"Let 's do that." 

George's face fell. He told me it was 
quite out of the question. He said that his 
license held him responsible to the Canadian 
government for my personal safety and that, 
should the rapids gobble me down, he would 
be a marked man and never, never be per- 
mitted to nursemaid any more fool-tourists. 
Then I talked to George rather pertly, I 
fear. I told him I was n't a tourist, by a 
blankety-blank sight ; that this was my party 
and my license and that, if the time should 
come that I must have a fussy chaperon 
clucking around me, I 'd pass up the wil- 
derness and take my vacation feeding the 
goldfish in the park aquarium. George 
[195] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

was deeply affected, but obdurate. Then 
I appealed eloquently to William Teddy, 
who shook his head, because he could n't 
speak English. 

I walked resolutely down to the shore 
and stepped into one of the canoes. 

"If you can run that water, I can — and 
do it alone, too," I called back. For a 
minute I actually believed that I might 
have to get away with it. Frankly, I was 
scared. Then George yelled, "Wait, wait!" 
and came running down to the canoe. It 
was a very narrow squeak. However, George 
insisted upon taking WilHam Teddy if I 
was determined to go. William was to take 
the bow-paddle, George the stern paddle, 
and I the amidships paddle and to paddle 
only when I was told. I promised. Also 
I told George to tell William Teddy that when 
Willam Teddy — because he couldn't speak 
English — wanted me to paddle or to cease 
paddling, he was to shout back to George 
and George was to tell me. It seemed a 
[196I 



Stand up and Yell 



waste of priceless time, thus to relay this 
vital intelligence. But I could n't see any 
other way to keep straight. 

I took off my heavy sweater and boots and 
revolver. We paddled out in front of the 
rapids. George stood up and took a last 
survey. Then we swung about and came 
down. I can't recall many sensations, save 
the overpowering impulse to stand up and 
yell — which of course would have been 
shockingly inappropriate. The curious thing 
about running swift water is that one is not 
conscious of the terrific speed, indeed of 
motion at all, until one looks at the shore 
rushing backward. George and William T. 
would put their paddles far out, at arm's 
length, and literally pull the canoe over 
to the submerged paddle. We grazed one 
rock. Then a back- wash from another rock 
slopped into the canoe. 

William T. suddenly developed symptoms 
of extreme perturbation. He began clawing 
madly all on one side of the canoe. I could 
[197I 



William Teddy's Tongue 

see that he wanted to cross the rapids to the 
other side. He shouted something over 
his shoulder. I waited for George to trans- 
late it. Then William T. shouted it again. 
Still George was silent. Perhaps he could n't 
hear Billy T.'s order in the wild tumult of 
the boiling water. William T., anyway, — 
William T. who could n't speak any English, 
— could n't stand it another second. He 
whirled around on me with his black eyes 
flashing and yelled in my wondering ear: 

"Paddle on the leftside — paddle — paddle — 
like hell!" 

We flashed by Fred and Jim and one could 
have knocked their eyes off their cheeks 
nicely with a stick. We fairly hurdled a 
sunken log and came to the end of the slide, 
a sheer drop of about three feet. I glanced 
over the brink as we tore down upon it and 
fully expected to Annette Kellermann into 
those crystalline depths. But William T. 
was ready to offer the closing exhibition of 
his skill. Just as we made the jump, he 
[198] 



The Firesand Is "a Pretty and Compact River." 



Miracles and Idioms 



gave the bow of the canoe a mighty flip 
off to left. Instead of hitting nose-on and 
diving, we smacked the lower level with an 
even keel and raced off into the still slack- 
water again. 

I turned to grinning William T. and said 
frankly: 

"Under compulsion, Billy, you can shoot 
bad water just as well as you can shoot good 
English. No more of that bunk or no more 
tobacco. " 

The miracle worked lasting wonders. The 
excitement that had brought profanity broke 
the silence of the tomb. Thereafter William 
T.'s English idioms were the life and joy 
of the camp. 

Jim, meanwhile, was keeping his three- 
o'clock-date with those trout. Moreover, 
the trout behaved just as any ingenuous and 
single-minded trout that have n't seen a 
high-priced fly in about twenty years should 
behave. Fred brought the first bulletin 
from Jim. He raced down to the spot where 
I199I 



William Teddy's Tongue 

the duffel was piled and said Jim had hooked 
something in the rapids which he thought 
was probably a submarine and wanted three 
or four landing nets. We went up and found 
Jim standing on a rock full of optimistic 
estimates as to the size of the fish and blood- 
chilling epithets for us and our delays. 
George went right out into the rapids — neck- 
deep — for that trout. And each one that 
Jim or Fred or His Lordship hooked in that 
torrent fought his captor gloriously to the 
last swish of George's deadly net. 

When the tents were up and we *d bathed 
and put on dry clothes and His Lordship 
had put his moustaches to bed for the night 
and those trout were spluttering in Tommie's 
frying-pan and we made the Sign of the 
Wolf Track with four tin-cups grouped to- 
gether and raised chin-high, we blessed our 
blundering benefactor who had heralded 
the fact that ''There 're no trout in the 
Michipocoten. " 

Of course, we camped right there, at the 
[200] 



Too Many Nocturnes 



lower end of those rapids. I find that at 
this camp I made two entries in the Log to 
which I evidently attached tremendous im- 
portance when I made them. First, George 
and Tommie contrived to make some highly- 
palatable bread in the frying-pan. Second, 
I caught a big wall-eyed pike below the 
rapids on a Parmachenee Belle. But those 
events, in retrospection, fail to provoke a 
thrill now. It is curious what a self-centred 
egotist a camper can become. But it 's more 
curious that a wall-eyed pike should rise 
to a fly, as this finny aesthete unquestionably 
did. After dinner that night Pete took a 
hook, about the size of a yacht's anchor, 
baited it with raw pork, and yanked grass- 
pike out of the slackwater at our front 
doorstep until his arm ached. That 's why 
we found no trout in the beautifxil riffles 
just below the falls. 

I am tired of ending these chapters with 
the night-enshrouded camp, the camp-fire 
burning low, and the north wind moaning 

[201] 



William Teddy's Tongue 

in the Norway-pines and everybody snoring 
vilely. It is symbolic and logical, perhaps, 
but I don't want the reader to get the im- 
pression that I can't stop writing without 
being put to sleep. 

The next morning — there, we hurdled 
that alluring picture of the nocturnal wil- 
derness — the next morning, we picked up 
and paddled off — across Whitefish Lake. I 
am not sure — neither is George — whether 
Whitefish Lake was so named because 
somebody really thought he saw a whitefish 
in it, or thought the map made the lake 
look like a whitefish. I have too much 
respect, even affection, for the maker of my 
map to be drawn into the discussion. Any- 
way, we trolled the whole six miles of White- 
fish Lake, in the vague hope that a namaycush 
would become enamored of the spoon or a 
whitefish get side-swiped by it — with no 
material returns. As a matter of fact, it 
was full of long-necked weeds. 

Then, about ten o'clock, we came to 
[202] 



His Lordship Needful 



Frenchman's Rapid, with its exquisite setting 
and many trout. We lunched there, and 
lunch, when you have His Lordship to pre- 
pare the convivial preliminaries, offers a 
place to halt, quite as attractive and fitting 
as a "night-enshrouded camp." 



[203] 



CHAPTER X 

THE TROUT OF CAT PORTAGE, THE FULFILMENT 
OF ELEVEN MONTHS* DREAMING 

GEORGE thought it ''safe and sane" to 
portage the outfit a half-mile around 
the falls at Frenchman's Rapid. After Wil- 
liam Teddy's triumph at Pigeon Falls, I felt 
competent to shoot Frenchman's Rapid — 
yea, shoot it blindfolded, playing a mandolin 
with one hand and writing my autograph with 
the other. Fred, too, was enthusiastic about 
it. As a matter of fact, Fred is always per- 
fectly willing to take a hundred-to-one shot 
and play it either way. Fred's life is a hot- 
footed pursuit of new sensations. I am ready 
to bet a lace-doily against the last cigarette 
in camp that the first man that bumps his 
monoplane into an asteroid is Fred. Any 
expedition that holds out the slightest chance 
[204] 



Curiosity Trail 



of adventure is no place for a man who owes 
a duty to his family — ^if Fred is along. But 
Jim and His Lordship would n't hear of it — 
our shooting Frenchman's Rapid, I mean. 
They did n't want their trip marred by a 
fatality — even a fool's fatality — and that 
argument was too honest to be answera- 
ble so we hit the trail, while the Indians 
portaged. 

It was a beautiful trail, candid and well- 
behaved. In fact it was so good that when 
Fred and I struck an intersecting trail that 
looked fresh, we were simultaneously seized 
with a desire to leave the portage-trail and 
see where the new trail led to. It looked as 
if it might lead to a lake. The contour of 
the country indicated it. We knew it would 
take an hour for the Indians to get the things 
over the portage, so we struck off on that 
siren trail. 

It did lead to a lake, a beautiful, placid, 
brooding little lake, and, to our surprise, we 
saw an Indian tepee on the far side of it. 
[205] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

We walked around the lake — still on the 
trail — and found an Indian patching a birch- 
bark canoe, in front of the tepee. I recog- 
nized him as Jim Radigeau, or something 
like that. Anyway, it was Jim. The last 
time — and only time — I had seen Jim was 
five years ago up on St. Ignace Island, in 
Nepigon Bay. Then we found a pulp- wood 
camp just as we had decided to sleep under 
a spruce all night, and the next day Jim 
took us first to a trout-stream and then to 
our camp. 

Jim said he had his "woman'* and kids 
in the tepee. Fred and I went in to call and 
take some pictures. There were a squaw 
and four half or three quarter naked young- 
sters in that tepee. Nobody seemed to be 
enjoying the call. We stayed just long 
enough in that tepee to exchange a few half- 
Chippewa commonplaces and observe that 
all the members of Jim's family looked droopy 
and languid. I tried to draw one little 
papoose into conversation, but there was 
[206] 



Solicitude and 



nothing doing. When we came out I said^ 
"Jim, — the wife and the kids don't seem to 
be weU." 

Jim said "Naw" and went right on putting 
pitch on the canoe-seams. 

"Been sick long?" asked Fred sympa- 
thetically. 

"Two, free day — mebbe week or two," 
said Jim. 

"What 's the matter with them — do you 
know, Jim?" I asked. 

"Not much — just leetle seek, I guess — 
smallpox — man at Post he say." 

In that dash through the brush Fred, I 
recall vaguely, fell three times. We took 
four or five baths, brushed our teeth, and 
rubbed ourselves thoroughly with all of His 
Lordship's moustache-invigorator. In fact, 
we took all the precautions that the limited 
medical-kit permitted and then promised 
each other to say nothing to Jim or His 
Lordship, for fear of alarming them need- 
lessly, until the worst should manifest itself. 
[207] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

It was another eloquent lesson to "stick to 
the trail." 

I should like very much to write five or 
six books about that stretch of the Michipo- 
coten River between Frenchman's Rapid 
and Cat Portage. That is n't more than 
two miles. We should have been delighted 
to have found it a hundred. It is there a 
typical trout-stream, magnified about ten- 
fold. The current is swift — here and there 
riffles — and always on one bank or the other 
there is a deep, dark hole. We were casting 
into those holes constantly — that is, as 
many of them as we could reach before we 
whizzed by in the canoes. A man would 
get a rise and never have the chance to give 
that chagrined trout an encore, if he missed, 
and it took a trout with a big appetite and a 
good eye to hit those flies as they raced past. 
It was a crime to fish that magnificent water 
in that Cook- tourist fashion and, more shame 
to us, we knew it. 

Once, I remember, I cast in beneath the 
[208] 



In Amber Shadows 



overhanging bank, to deep, dark, amber 
water in the shadows. My flies hit a 
log — I thought I had lost the leader — 
and then toppled off into the water. A 
great trout struck, just as the fleeing ca- 
noe tightened the line. And I struck back. 
He was too good a fish to tow astern like 
a saw-log. He deserved better things. I 
insisted upon a landing on a sand beach. 
George swung in and we pulled that gor- 
geous little savage out on the snow-white 
sands. We took a half-dozen, casting from 
that beach over into the deep water across 
the river. 

There was one thing we did perfect, though, 
during that river trip. That was the theory 
and technique of "inside baseball." When 
you wanted anything which you knew some 
other canoe contained, all you had to do 
was to yell for it — and catch it. We grew 
so expert that we could pick tobacco-pouches, 
cigarettes, tin cups, matches, map-cases, fly- 
books, and other sybaritic articles, capable of 
14 [209] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

a fair trajectory, out of the clear northern 
atmosphere with an accuracy that brought 
applause from George and appreciative giggles 
from William T. himself. 

We did n't run the rapids at Cat Portage, 
either. I was n't conscious of the vaguest 
impulse to run those rapids after we had 
had a look at them. There is a drop there 
of thirty-three feet within a half-mile and 
the water bellows down a set of terraces, in 
one place taking a straight fall of ten feet. 
It was about two o'clock when we reached 
the upper end of Cat Portage, and after 
carrying to the lower end, we did precisely 
what we should not have done and might 
have been expected to do — namely, fish at 
the wrong end of the rapids. It was ideal 
trout-water, save for the inexplicable absence 
of trout. We did n't get a rise down there 
at the base of the falls. His Lordship said 
he did n't know much about the habits of 
trout, but if that were a good specimen of 
the taste and judgment of a trout of average 
[210] 



Inspirations and Results 

intelligence, he did n't care to know any 
more. 

Fred and I sat down on a roll of blankets 
and discussed this palpable nature-fake on 
the trout's part. Suddenly Fred slapped 
his thigh and said: 

"I've got it!" 

Eagerly I inquired for the clue. 

"It is very simple," he chuckled. "The 
reason the trout are n't rising down here is 
because we 're fishing where there are n't any 
trout." 

' ' Wonderful ! " I applauded warmly. " Your 
idea, then, is to take a trout-census of these 
rapids, learn where the trout-population is 
most congested, and fish there. Fine! Where 
do you suggest we begin?" 

"Up the rapids, of course," said Fred, 
ignoring my futile irony. "We've made 
that mistake every time we 've struck any 
rapids. The trout are in the rapids, neither 
above nor below. Come on!" 

Fred and I hit the back trail. The place 

[211] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

which we selected to leave the trail and work 
down to the rapids was excellently chosen. 
Evidently a tornado had also chosen that 
place to make a landing recently. Big cedars 
and pines were scattered about and piled 
upon one another in beautiful confusion. 
It was very diverting to walk along, over 
and under this heap of jack-straws, meanwhile 
carrying a trout-rod with three flies dangling 
and all looking for trouble. 

I knew we must be getting pretty close 
to the rapids — the roar told us that. Fred 
parted the bushes at last and began capering 
on his log. I joined him. There was some 
justification for capering. At our feet, maybe 
ten feet below, was a deep, shadowy pool with 
a little private waterfall of its own. It was a 
sort of quiet side-street to the main thorough- 
fare of traffic out there beyond. The trees 
canopied it. Fred clung with one arm to 
a tree-trunk and dropped his three flies 
into those mysterious waters. That is, he 
would have done that, if the trout had n't 
[212] 



Capering Condoned 



jumped and grabbed his flies before they 
reached the water. 

"Oh, my boy!" said Fred, with repressed 
emotion. "This is simply a shame! Here 
I shall settle down to a contented and tran- 
quil old age." 

But we did not settle down. That 's the 
restless ambition of a trout-fisherman — when 
he hooks his first pound-trout, he 's sure life 
holds no other work for him. After his 
third pound-trout, he begins to wonder if 
there is n't a pound-and-a-half trout in the 
next pool. His first two-pounder sires the 
ambition to make it four pounds. Finally 
ambition — or greed — had driven us right 
out into the middle of the rapids with such 
a din all about us that we had to scream 
into each other's ears. There was a sort 
of granite backbone through the centre of 
that mad water and we fished from that, 
casting sometimes over into the torrent on 
the far side and letting the flies run down 
with the welter, and sometimes dropping 
[213] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

the flies over the brink of a precipice into 
the foam at the base of the falls. Sometimes 
you could see a lithe, orange little form 
shoot up above the white-caps for an instant 
as he rushed at your fly. But that was n't 
often. Generally, the first warning, an elec- 
trifying thrill, came along your line and your 
protesting rod would suddenly bend double. 
Jim joined us — to see why we were delaying 
the expedition's departure down the river. 
He came to chasten and hurry us. Jim 
took one cast — it was to be "just one quick 
one"; then Jim was lost completely to the 
call of duty and the flight of time. No 
fish we got in those two delirious hours went 
above two pounds. But in the swift, cold 
water that gave them all the rugged strength 
and ferocity of the wilderness and made every 
ounce of resistance tell, each trout was really 
as good as a three-pounder. Most of them 
we killed on Montreal-flies, although my 
largest took a "Willie H."— a local fly. We 
lost, probably, twice as many as we landed. 
I214] 



To Love and Duty Lost 

In that torrent, they often succeeded in 
tearing the hook from their mouths in the 
first furious rush. 

His Lordship followed Jim. He came up 
to tell us — what Jim, some hours before, had 
come to tell us — that our thoughtless delay- 
was delaying the departure of the expedition 
— and we had to find a camping-site. His 
Lordship was just as indignant and logical 
and entirely right in his contention as Jim 
had been. We pressed a rod into His Lord- 
ship's hands. Two hours later we had to 
lay violent hands upon His Lordship to 
arouse him to his duty-sense, because, this 
time, George had come to look for us, and 
it was really getting dark. 

My final departure from the college-campus 
— one June night a considerable number of 
years ago now — was no more reluctant than 
my departure from that wild, trout-sur- 
rounded rock, the focus of the Cat Portage 
Rapids. We talk of it now in whispers when 
we meet. And I — I brazenly declare it — I 
[215] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

dream of it, particularly when the Big 
City has been grinding me with unusual 
brutality and my brain and body pray mem- 
ory to bring just a little relief. 

For three miles, then, in the twilight 
we ran rapids, innocent, playful little rapids 
for the most way — but continuous rapids. 
It rained, too. But as we had sent Pete 
and Tommie on ahead with one canoe to put 
up the tents and start dinner-preparations, 
we paddled right into luxury. Shelter and 
dry clothes and a roaring fire were ready for 
us — in a grove of huge cedars that stood on 
the crest of a high bank. 

I observed that when we broached the topic, 
ever congenial, of the dinner bill-of-fare, both 
Tommie and George were elaborately secre- 
tive. Both of them were fairly swathed in 
some huge and portentous mystery. Knowing 
the Indian mind a little — a mind that is child- 
like in its simplicity and gentleness — I 
dropped the subject and left dinner to them 
as they, very evidently, longed to have me do. 

[216] 



Coup Culinary 



When we scampered under the dining-fly, 
the pyrotechnic set-piece was touched off. 
There were two ducks! George had killed 
them — while we were fishing Cat Portage — 
and killed them with Fred's little twenty- 
two-calibre rifle, too. How Tommie had 
contrived to roast them in an hour, we shall 
never know. But they were good, almost 
as good as the expressions of beatific delight 
on those gentle red men's faces as they 
watched us fall upon the birds. 

The mosquitoes came down from the 
swamps in large family-parties that night 
and dallied with us till sunrise. But it was 
the first time and only time on the trip 
and — let this be inscribed in letters large 
and luminous — not a dozen black-flies did we 
see on the Michipocoten River. 

Two red squirrels, playing foUow-the- 
leader or hare-and-hounds along the ridge- 
pole of my tent and using absolutely the 
most profane language I have ever listened 
to in the woods, awakened me. His Lord- 
[217] 



The Trout of Cat Portage 

ship was on his knees in front of the tent 
trying to start a fire, while Jim, from an 
eminently safe and warm vantage-point, 
between his Hudson Bay blankets, was 
telling His Lordship minutely how to do it. 
To His Lordship*s outspoken relief, Fred 
and I fell upon James and the argumentative 
uproar reminded George that he had n't 
awakened us — which he forthwith came to 
do. 

The rain-storm had blown on, up toward 
the Arctic Circle, and the wilderness was all 
fresh and glittering when we pushed the 
canoes out into the stream — for the last 
day on the Michipocoten. Almost imme- 
diately we glided down upon wonderful 
trout-water, semi-rapids and deep pools 
beneath the slack-water that eddied about 
great stumps and rocks. Also, almost im- 
mediately, we began getting big rises and 
hooking big fish. We began making pools — 
gambling, not trout-pools — of a dollar a 
corner. Every time a man netted a fish, 

[218] 



Shadow of the Cauldron 

Jim, in the rearmost canoe, would make an 
entry in the Log and re-adjust the "batting 
averages." 

Near the mouth of the An-jo-go-mi-ni 
River — ^which is merely an indolent creek, by 
the way — George and I, in the first canoe, 
suddenly shot around a bend and found our- 
selves in a great granite basin. The en- 
trance was scarcely ten yards across. The 
basin was, perhaps, fifty yards in diameter 
and at the outlet it narrowed up again as 
it was at the entrance. The walls of rock 
arose straight out of the water and towered 
up fifty to a hundred feet high. In there the 
water boiled and circled about upon itself 
like a cauldron. Here and there a great 
boulder showed its head intermittently, as 
the torrent raced over it and subsided for 
the moment. It was, indeed, a giant's 
chamber. 

The instant the bow of the canoe cleared 
the entrance and I cast over near the rocks, 
a tremendous fish struck the drop-fly and I 
[219] 



The Trout at Cat Portage 

set the hook in him solidly and felt the thrill 
of the living weight on the line. He made 
just one rush, straight for the canoe, and went 
under it, before George, ever alert, could 
sweep the bow around. I could no more 
snub that fury than I could have snubbed 
a street-car, hooked to a four-ounce rod. 
And the inevitable and most lamentable 
happened: the second joint of my rod 
snapped with a sharp report. Then, murder 
flared up in my heart. For about five years 
life had held nothing dearer to my heart 
than that rod — that is, nothing very much 
dearer. It had accompanied me along the 
whole coast-line of Lake Superior and it 
had never faltered or complained or sulked. 
Just before I left the Big City for this trip, 
the sporting-goods man who had re- wound 
and shellacked that dear little rod had offered 
me half of his store and one of the children 
for it — and I had laughed with a light heart 
at him. So George and I fought that trout- 
beast with clenched teeth. When George 
[220] 



Vengeance 

finally netted him on a rock we shook our 
fists in his face and cursed him. 

However, His Lordship, Fred, and Jim, 
successively, darting through that opening 
into the maelstrom and heeding my shouts 
to swing over into the slack- water, so as to 
cover that great pool, speedily began mani- 
festing symptoms of profound agitation. At 
one time the three canoes were hooked-up 
to three big trout simultaneously and the 
evolutions, quite extemporaneous, of that 
flotilla reminded George and me of a water 
carnival more than anything else. However, 
there was nothing festal in the least suggested 
by the language which they used when they 
got their lines intermingled and chased their 
trout underneath one another's canoes. 

George wrenched us away from that granite 
chamber. At Storm Hill we ran some rather 
ugly rapids and at noon George announced 
us abreast of the Firesand River. We had 
heard really a tremendous lot about the 
Firesand. On the steamer coming up the 

[221] 



The Trout at Cat Portage 

shore a miner told us that he had camped for 
two weeks once on the Firesand and the 
trout were so plentiful and savage and pes- 
tiferous that, as I recall now, he had to set 
wolf-traps for them to keep them out of 
the grub. Naturally, we had talked a great 
deal and looked forward with liveliest an- 
ticipation to the Firesand River. For a 
time I could n't see the Firesand at all, even 
after George had pointed it out and assured 
me that it was n't fifty yards away. True, 
it was a pretty and compact river, just the 
kind that a householder would like to have 
to fill his bath-tub o' mornings when the 
pressure at the city water works is lethargic 
and slow. There might have been a trout 
in it — ^if the trout did n't mind close quarters, 
but there certainly was n't room for two. We 
were so disappointed that we went to the 
beach for lunch and something from His Lord- 
ship's flask. One of us was forced to "take it 
straight, " too. There was n't enough water 
in the Firesand River for four "chasers." 
[222] 



A Varied Program 



It took us all the afternoon to get through 
and around the falls of the Michipocoten. 
Those are the real falls of the whole great 
river. In three miles the river drops one 
hundred and eighty-four feet. The rational 
thing to do there is to load the canoes on a 
wagon — there is a power-plant there — and 
portage around in comfort and dignity and 
dryness. However, we were looking for 
incident and color and disinclined toward 
rationalism. We got the incident and color, 
too. For just four hours we were at it. 
We ran some nasty water. We portaged 
around sheer precipices. We cut through 
dense underbrush with our axes to lug the 
canoes. We carried the canoes over shallows. 
We spilled out and got in again. We were 
in the water to our necks. Fred himself 
performed a submarine feat once, when the 
paddle, upon which he was putting his 
weight, slipped off a submerged rock. The 
last two hundred yards of those rapids we 
tobogganed down an oily slide in which 
[223] 



The Trout at Cat Portage 

the sprinter's path was marked off by jagged 
rocks, sometimes not more than five feet 
apart. 

By that time it was six-thirty, growing 
cold and dark, and we were very wet. George 
had lost his hat and Jim his pipe. Jim 
wasn't sure that he had lost his pipe. He 
said he thought maybe he had swallowed it 
during one of those tense moments when 
his canoe had the alternative of hurdling 
a boulder or going through it. There was a 
good place to camp right there. And yet 
the idea of dashing along, not stopping until 
we reached the old Hudson's Bay post 
whence we had started, and completing the 
whole Michipocoten River trip that night 
with a flourish was admittedly attractive. 
I quizzed George as to the distance down 
the river to its mouth. 

*'0h, mebbe, free, four mile — yes, sure, 
I guess, mebbe — five mile, sure, 'bout dat." 

We baled out, wrung out, lighted up — and 
started. The sun disappeared. Then came 
[224] 



In the Stretch 



the brilliant afterglow of the northern heavens. 
Every man paddled and paddled hard, be- 
cause every man was cold and there was 
no other way for any man to keep warm. 
We raced down the river. Each turn we 
expected to be the opening of the last mile 
stretch, and George would say: 

**0h, mebbe, two, free mile more — sure, 
'bout dat." 

The waters of the river turned to silver, 
then gold, then purple. We passed beau- 
tiful trout-water, but we had no time to fish. 
We turned a bend of the river. The canoes 
were going silently, every man intent upon 
his stroke. There was a sound of rolling 
pebbles. There was a sand-bank, probably 
thirty feet high. A red deer had been drink- 
ing at the foot of it. When he heard us, or 
saw us, he had no choice but to scramble up 
that bank to safety. And how that deer did 
scramble! He was a big six-point buck and 
it took him three minutes to climb that sliding 
sand and burst into the thicket with a snort. 
IS [225] 



The Trout at Cat Portage 

And still we paddled. We were going, 
probably, seven miles an hour with that 
slashing current and had been at it for an 
hour, then an hour and a half, then two hours 
— and still no Mission and familiar white 
buildings of the post. George pointed out 
a place where, thirty years ago, the Hudson's 
Bay Company had deliberately and wisely 
changed the bed of th-''-'^>^'^ "moved it over 
bodily about a hal;^- ice the river 

described almost a cks-^x-^ ^op there and the 
voyageurs did n't care for the mile portage, 
besides. It 's a serious-minded, precocious 
little corporation, that Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. 

My back muscles were fairly squeaking 
and I could feel blisters thriving luxuriously 
on my poor protesting knee-caps, when I 
heard a dog howl. Then several dogs and 
a whole half-wolf pack howled. The spire 
of the Mission came into the brilliant sky 
and we smelled wood-smoke in the twilight 
and heard a man shout to us from the shore. 
[226] 



And so — at Last- 



With no announcement, we glided out of 
the last turn upon the broad stretch of the 
river and there lay the deserted buildings 
of the post, on our left, their whitewashed 
clapboards and little window-panes shimmer- 
ing in the white moonlight. We felt dis- 
tinctly romantic and historical — particularly 
His Lordship. We could fairly fancy our- 
selves wraiths r"* ' old voyageurs, spirits 
of those rare- \ days, who in their 
vigorous human es had come down 
through just the wild rapids and gorges 
and trails that we had passed — straight down 
through the great wilderness from James 
Bay — and now saw their journey's end in 
the lights of the post, where hospitality and 
money and gaudy red sashes and wine and 
song awaited them. Had we known a 
chanson — as only dear dead Henry Drum- 
mond knew them — ^we should have sung one 
as we swung up to the old landing place. 
But we didn't. The lights were out. We 
scarcely spoke to one another as each stepped 
[227] 



The Trout at Cat Portage 

stiffly from the canoe. It really was not a 
nice sound to hear the grating of the canoe- 
keels on the beach. To be sure, it meant 
camp, a fire, dry clothes, a drink, and dinner. 
But it meant, also, the end of a tremendous 
chapter in our lives — a chapter never old 
and always green. And such a realization 
is always bad, the only really bad thing 
in the philosophy of the wilderness and the 
calendar of Vacation Days. 

THE END. 



[228] 

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